Karen Dukess

Karen Dukess brings experience in journalism, publishing, and international work to fiction about ambition and belonging. The Last Book Party, her debut novel, unfolds in New York and Cape Cod during the summer of 1987. Twenty-five-year-old Eve Rosen works as a publishing assistant and hopes to become a writer, yet uncertainty makes the celebrated author Henry Grey and his literary circle especially dazzling. A research position draws Eve closer to the Grey family and to their annual costume party, where guests appear as literary characters. The novel arrived from Henry Holt in 2019. Dukess uses the period publishing world and coastal setting to contrast professional glamour with private conduct. Eve’s education comes through work, observation, poor judgment, and the gradual formation of standards she can call her own. The Last Book Party will appeal to readers of literary coming-of-age fiction, especially those interested in books, mentorship, class, and the uneasy distance between admiring a writer’s public reputation and understanding the people behind it.