Happy Bad

"Nolan keenly portrays Beatrice’s hope and despair as she transforms from bureaucrat to would-be savior. This glimpse into a terrifyingly plausible future smuggles tenderness amid the horrors."—Publishers Weekly

"Happy Bad shows the too-near future of our nightmares: climate disastrous, opportunities few, food altered, brains manipulated. But this book also gives us the best we can dream of: people who look out for each other, communities who take care. Delaney Nolan has written a brutal, joyful, surprising, and gorgeous novel of human contradictions. It’s a stunner." 
—Julia Phillips, author of Bear and Disappearing Earth

"Delaney Nolan's breathtaking, sharply crafted debut announces the arrival of an important new writer. The characters who populate these pages are unforgettable. Happy Bad will stand the test of time, but it's also exactly the kind of book we need in our troubled times."—Jamel Brinkley, author of A Lucky Man and Witness

"This is a preternaturally good novel by a writer who can see the future. Not the 'thing that will happen if we don't change course' but the future that has already crept up on us—the slow apocalypse, the rising water, the burned-out grid. In addition to being a pitch-perfect description of the consequences of capital's love affair with oil, Happy Bad is a riotously well-written, weirdly fun nail-biter of a story—and a poignant defense of human life, however grimy the circumstances." 
—Lydia Kiesling, author of Mobility


"An exhilarating, dynamic, addictive debut, Delaney Nolan's Happy Bad is a hell of a book."—Jami Attenberg, author of A Reason to See You Again
"What a writer Delaney Nolan is. Every sentence of Happy Bad hums electric. Nolan has written an all-too-real future, hot and drug-addled, and every page will surprise you, delight you, devastate you. It is rare to find a book at once as imaginative and true, as horrifying and hopeful, as this brilliant debut. A major talent, Nolan doesn't shy away from America's biggest problems; she takes them on with wit, humor, and compassion." —Matthew Salesses, author of The Sense of Wonder