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  • Published: 28 October 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529964868
  • Imprint: Transworld Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $34.99

Wreck

  • Catherine Newman




From the NYT bestselling author of WE ALL WANT IMPOSSIBLE THINGS and SANDWICH, a laugh out loud, deeply emotional novel about life's random accidents, family, and living for the moment.

From the NYT bestselling author of WE ALL WANT IMPOSSIBLE THINGS and SANDWICH, a deeply emotional and deeply funny novel about life's random accidents, family, and living for the moment.

Rocky, Nick, Willa and Jamie. A normal loving, anxious, messy, unpredictable, relatable, family.

Rocky has her own her way of processing disasters: 1. This could happen to us. 2. This couldn’t happen to us. And then there’s a secret third column: ‘This could happen to us unless I am very careful/ superstitious/ grateful…’

So what happens when ‘this could happen to us’ turns into ‘it really might be me’?

When a former classmate of Jamie’s dies in a seemingly random accident, Rocky becomes obsessed. She's also developed a niggling medical condition that won't go away. She is still living her best life as the irreverent, funny, unpredictably beating heart of her family. Her father is still his unique, outspoken adorable self; Willa is still prone to bouts of existential angst whilst berating the fact that her mother has zero filter; Nick is still steady, logical, sometimes infuriating.

But if accidents can happen – and they do – is it safe to love anyone?

Laugh out loud funny and deeply emotional, WRECK follows Rocky and her family through one rollercoaster year as they learn to live with life's 'what ifs?'

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PRAISE FOR SANDWICH & WE ALL WANT IMPOSSIBLE THINGS:

'Breezy New York Nora-Ephron-style wit meets hospice memoir to create something profoundly beautiful...comforting, so funny, moving but never mawkish and packed with all kinds of love. It's one of my favourite books ever' bestselling author, MARIAN KEYES

'One of the funniest books I've ever read' FEARNE COTTON, STYLIST

'I adored this book. Jubilant, devastating, tender, heartbreaking, I found myself both in tears and 'snorty-laughing'. A masterclass on friendship, family love, memory, and the messiness of life and love and dying. Pure genius' RACHEL JOYCE, author of the bestseller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

'Tragically funny, with moments of clarity and wisdom, Newman writes loss and laughter in equally brilliant amounts' BONNIE GARMUS, bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry

'Newman is truly a master of taking complex and chaotic human emotion and making sense of it ... wise and exquisitely written' GUARDIAN

'Sandwich is joy in book form. I laughed continuously, except for the parts that made me cry. Catherine Newman does a miraculous job reminding us of all the wonder there is to be found in life.' ANN PATCHETT, New York Times bestselling author of Tom Lake

  • Published: 28 October 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529964868
  • Imprint: Transworld Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $34.99

Praise for Wreck

Wreck is the kind of book that pulls up a chair, pours the wine, and dives deep—equal parts hilarious, sharp, and achingly sincere. It’s like spending hours with the friend who sees your mess and loves you more for it. I didn’t just read it—I felt known by it. A luminous, laugh-out-loud triumph by Newman.

Alison Espach, New York Times bestselling author of The Wedding People

Endorsing a new Catherine Newman novel feels a bit like endorsing puppies or chocolate cake. It's a new Catherine Newman novel. Of course you want to read it. Wreck is a delight. What an absolute joy to be reunited with Rocky and her family, the characters we all fell in love with in Sandwich. Newman's prose is laugh-out-loud funny. It's also profound. I underlined so many passages in this treasure of a novel. It brought about that conundrum that the best books always do: I couldn't stop reading, even though I didn't want it to end.

J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of The Cliffs

I loved it! A gorgeously human, tender-hearted, and delightfully funny exploration of the anxieties that beset all of us, and the loving relationships and irrepressible joy that gets us through.

Nussaibah Younis, author of international bestseller Fundamentally

Catherine Newman’s new novel is a rare thing: both laugh-out-loud funny and deeply attuned to the quiet devastations of illness, grief, and family life. In Rocky, a woman mourning her mother’s death while grappling with her own changing health, Newman gives us a narrator whose fierce intelligence and generous heart make even the most ordinary moments shimmer with grace.

Meghan O'Rourke, New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Kingdom

Catherine Newman has my heart . . . . Newman is my dream writer, and she channels the perfect cocktail of humanity into her characters, especially Rocky. Rocky is funny and dry and emotional and sometimes crazy and always loving, so loving, of her family, even as she struggles and panics. It’s a gift to get to be on the quest with her, and learn alongside her, about how to be alive, to be a person, to be good, to be worthy.

Lithub (Most Anticipated Books)

Newman excels at showing how sorrow and joy coexist in everyday life. She masterfully balances a modern exploration of grief with truly laugh-out-loud lines . . . . A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

How comforting, how satisfying, and how delicious to be once again in the world of Rocky and her family where everyday life bangs against potential disaster and somehow muddles its way through. Infectiously funny and surprisingly moving, Wreck reminds us that we are each, in our way, trying to make sense of the big things with some very small tools - and that love in the end is the thing that saves us.

Rachel Joyce
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