Category Archives: The Mortons

The Mortons: Out Now

The Mortons, my first novel for adults, co-written with Scott Westerfeld, is now available in Australia, Canada, New Zealand & the USA!

Here’s an essay we wrote for People on what it was like writing together.

Here’s some early reactions:

“The book thrums with creative verve, mordant humor and amusing detours into subjects like art, avant-garde fashion and mixology . . . . What you would get if you put the Corleones, the Addamses, the Targaryens and the Borgias together.”

—The New York Times Book Review

Elegant, funny, sophisticated, and always goes in a darker direction whenever you think it’s gone as far as it could. As far as crime family sagas and dark academia stories go, it doesn’t get much more worthwhile than The Mortons.

—Collider

“If you recently loved by Kathryn Foxfield and you adore Succession, then you’ll want to take a look at The Mortons by Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld. . . it’s packed with old-money dynasties, vintage garments, and crime.”

—Parade

“A page-turning tale about an “Old Money” family. . . a bracing and searching story about the lengths a child will go to make their family proud. Readers won’t want to put this down.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Jessica Morton is the daughter of an ancient and powerful family, in competition with her cousins to run their criminal empire. Each generation attends a private boarding school with a shadow curriculum, in which the cousins learn the art of creative accounting, subtle influence, and bold assassination; each generation accepts that they may be culled before they begin to live, for this is their family’s way. But something is changing, has already changed—Jessica’s generation is far too small, her family seems desperate, and a rebellion may be brewing. Once you start reading this one, you won’t be able to stop! Just as the Morton family planned . . .”

—CrimeReads

“Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld create a complex, riveting character in 20-year-old narrator Jessica Morton, who’s been raised by her family to steal and murder without detection… Larbalestier and Westerfeld render the constellation of family members with sensational details… The plot unfolds at breakneck speed as the authors immerse readers in a world of “loyalty without care,” so it’s all the more impressive how worthy of care Jessica turns out to be… In this fascinating thriller, Jessica Morton is a prodigy in a family of assassins and money launderers–until she develops feelings for her assigned “prey.””

—Shelf Awareness

“Serves up a robustly imagined world that. . . abounds with nods to horror and macabre symbolism. . . . The novel affords some of the pleasures generated by Addams and Soprano family shenanigans.”

—Kirkus

“Readers should prepare to be haunted by the family’s cruelty, but they will root for Jessica as she seeks to finally claim compassion and empathy.”

—Booklist

“This diabolical novel reads like a mashup of Succession and The Umbrella Academy, except set within an old-money family of assassins. With its knife-sharp writing, rocket fuel pacing, and air of mystery, The Mortons is easy to get lost in, all the way up to the brutal end.”

—Ashley Winstead, national bestselling author of This Book Will Bury Me

“Slippery, sinister, and so much fun.”

—Charlotte McConaghy, New York Times bestselling author of Wild Dark Shore

“The Mortons are the most spectacularly unhinged crime family ever imagined. They have the cutest pets, throw the most glamorous funerals, enact the most shockingly lethal rituals, drink the bitterest cocktails and drive the most expensive automobiles. Their story hurtled along so fast and surprised me so often I was shocked to realize I’d been contemplating and recalibrating my moral compass as I read, but so I had. An absolute delight.”

—E. Lockhart, #1 New York Times bestselling author of We Were Liars

“Lush and darkly funny, The Mortons is a moreish, enveloping crime epic.”

—Flynn Berry, New York Times bestselling author of Trust Her

“Dark academia has never been so dark, nor family legacy so beguilingly treacherous! Sinister, shocking, and tantalizingly possible, The Secret History meets Succession in this epic and utterly chilling family saga. What makes us who we are, and how can our moral codes be twisted to into cold and ruthless alliance? Identity, loyalty, and the power of personal decision all teeter on the precipice in this tour de force of storytelling—and I held my breath through the entire book. Call your book club and settle in—you will never be the same after you meet the Mortons.”

—Hank Phillippi Ryan, national bestselling author of All This Could Be Yours

“Diabolical and delicious, the world of The Mortons—a murderous family dynasty—is as real and tangible as the one we inhabit. So much so that I’m not entirely sure they aren’t out there, scheming, culling and blooding their brood, one at a time. Watch your back. Utterly delightful and disturbing.”

—Julie Clark, New York Times bestselling author of The Ghostwriter

“The Mortons is a tour de force: witty, thrilling, and deliciously cruel. Enjoy it with a stiff cocktail.”

—Lev Grossman, New York Times bestselling author of The Magicians trilogy

“Stunningly original and fiendishly good. The Mortons left me reeling. A masterclass in moral ambiguity and shocking twists.”

—Sarah Pekkanen, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Locked Ward

“The Mortons is twisty and twisted fun. Truly original!”

—Tracy Sierra, author of Nightwatching

“Succession meets The Secret History. Contemporary dark academia at its best.”

—Will Dean, international bestselling author of Adrift

See You at Comic-Con in San Diego!

With The Mortons coming out next Tuesday (21 July), Scott and I are headed to San Diego Comic-Con! (After our launch party in NYC.)

We have two signings and a panel. Here’s our schedule:

Saturday, 25 July

Making Fiction Real: The Art of Writing Authentic Characters
Room 25ABC
10AM-11AM
We’ve all been there: You crack open a book, and the characters are so realistic, so enthralling, that they walk off the page. Ashley Poston (Someday Garden), Shirlene Obuobi (Die for Me), Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier (The Mortons), Elise Kova (Prince of Swords), and Chip Pons (Dearly Departed) discuss their craft and compare character-building techniques across genres. Moderated by Haydee Smith.

Signing for the Authentic Characters Panel
Sails Pavillion
6PM–7PM
Autograph Area AA03
This is an open signing, with the authors listed above. We are happy to sign anything you bring!

Sunday, 26 July

Free Book Giveaway of THE MORTONS
10:45AM
Booth #1515

This signing is ticketed. For signing tickets, head to Penguin Book World booth (#1514/1515) when the show floor opens. Distribution of tickets will begin when the show floor opens at Table 1 and move to the checkout area at 10:45AM.

And yes, for this Sunday signing, copies of The Mortons are free!

The Mortons

My next book will be The Mortons.

Co-written with Scott Westerfeld, it comes out on 21 July, 2026 in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA, and in the UK later this year.

You can pre-order it NOW in the USA and Canada, the UK, and Australia and New Zealand.

In this family, murder is currency. Business is booming.

THE MORTONS is an epic novel of alliances and power, loyalty and kinship, and the consequences of ruthless ambition.

The Mortons are a modern-day, old-money dynasty with impeccable taste. They are also stone-cold killers. Jessica Morton has always excelled at Helshire, a college where legacy students learn to exercise control over their wealthy peers. Now, having committed her first kill, it should be her moment, her honor. But that kill will unknot a series of revelations spanning the Mortons’ country estate, the New York City art world, and Helshire itself.

Here’s a write-up in The Bookseller.

Publisher’s pages for the USA edition, the UK edition, and Australian edition.

How to Find My Books

Because I haven’t published a new novel since 2016, my books have all become backlist titles, which means they aren’t readily available as printed paper books. The good news is that I’ll have a new novel out next year, The Mortons, which you’ll be able to purchase in English wherever you like in whatever format you like–in French, German and Bulgarian too–about which, more anon.

More good news: all my in-print books are available as ebooks: My Sister Rosa (also available in Spanish), Liar, Razorhurst, How To Ditch Your Fairy and Zombies v Unicorns are all available as ebooks across platforms. As is Love is Hell, an anthology in which I have a novella (which you can also get in French). Come On In & Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean, in which I have short stories can also be read digitally. You can even obtain an ebook of my scholarly tome, The Battle of The Sexes in Science Fiction.

(I recently discovered that my very out of print first three novels, the Magic or Madness trilogy, are still available to borrow as ebooks from the New York Public Library system. If you don’t tell, I won’t. I love NYPL and borrow ebooks from them frequently. Remember. libraries pay for books, so when you borrow a library book the author is getting paid.)

My Sister Rosa, Liar, Razorhurst, How To Ditch Your Fairy and Zombies v Unicorns are also available as audiobooks on all platforms. While Team Human is very much out of print in every other format, it is available as an audiobook. I have no idea why. Publishing is mysterious.

I picked the narrators for most of my audiobooks & think they’re pretty good, plus me & Holly Black recorded commentary for the Zombies v Unicorns audiobook. We had a ridiculous amount of fun recording our arguments in favour of our preferred supernatural creature and wound up adlibbing some of it, making it quite different from the printed original. I don’t like to boast but that audiobook was an Earphones Award winner.

Why are paper editions of my books hard to find? Publishers prioritise the most in demand & recent titles. When they run out of copies of older books, they tend not to reprint unless there’s very strong demand. If a TV show, movie or musical of a book is made that will push a book up the printing queue. Liar has been optioned to be a TV series for several years now. Should that comes to fruition, paper versions of the book will also reappear. Fingers crossed!

You’ll find that if you try to buy a new paper edition of one of my books, you’ll get a notice saying it’s a backorder. Basically that means they’re not going to order a new print run until enough people have backordered it. No one will tell me what that number is. I suspect it varies from publisher to publisher. I’ve been told that certain folks on TikTok getting excited by an older book can absolutely trigger enough demand that the publisher will reprint. Certain celebrities being photographed with a backlist book as an accessory can likewise trigger a reprint.

If you really must have a paper version of one of my books and you can’t get several hundred of your friends to backorder it, you can always try the secondhand markets. Nope, authors don’t get a cent when used copies of their books are sold. But if those books are out of print, or like mine, effectively out of print in paper, buying secondhand is the only way. It’s better than those old books going into landfill.

As someone who became a voracious reader in the 1900s when it was often nigh on impossible to find out of print books, I’m thrilled to live in this era of ebooks, audiobooks and online secondhand book dealers. It’s become so much easier to find obscure books. This bibliophile is delighted! And this author is relieved that if you really want to read even my oldest books you can.