The new book, The Mortons, is out! It’s an adult crime thriller about vintage fashion, bitter cocktails, and murder.

I am currently touring Australia with my co-writer, Justine Larbalestier!

Buy it at bookstores in the real world or online here. Today is pub day for US, Australia, and NZ. In the UK it’s not out until Oct 1, but you can pre-order here. (Full acknowledgments for the book are here.)

Below is a wrap up of all the great press we’ve been getting. Thanks to all the publicity folks on three continents who got the book out there!

“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 Wicked Gifts 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

My next book will be THE MORTONS.

Cowritten with Justine Larbalestier, it comes out July 21, 2026.

You can pre-order it NOW in the US, UK, and Australia.

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.

My next book is called THE MORTONS!

It’s an adult thriller written with Justine Larbalestier, and it comes out July 21, 2026 in the USA and Australia. (October 2026 in the UK.)

Here’s every button to buy or pre-order in the US, UK, and Australia:

USA
Amazon
Apple iBooks
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
Bookshop
ebooks.com
Kindle
Target
Audio
Audible
Libro.FM
Spotify

UK
Amazon
Apple iBooks
Blackwells
Bookshop.org
Foyles
Hive
Kobo
TG Jones
Waterstones
Audio
Apple
GooglePlay
Kobo
Libro.FM
Spotify

AUSTRALIA
Abbeys
Amazon
Apple iBooks
Big W
Booktopia
Dymocks
QBD
Readings
Your Bookstore
Find Local Retailers
AUDIO
Audible
Kobo
Libro.FM

The Leviathan anime is out now, on Netflix.

It’s been a long journey and a wonderful one, thanks to the extraordinary work by Studio Orange and Qubic Pictures. So much amazing talent has been poured into this series, somehow caputuring all three books in twelve short episodes. It sounds mad, but it works!

Click here to watch!

The new Uglies audiobook is available TODAY, read by the wonderful Brianne Tju, who plays Shay in the Netflix movie. Check out my interview with Brianne, and a couple of excerpts, below.

Click here to buy it!

The Uglies trailer dropped yesterday, and it’s FULL of Easter eggs for fans of the book. Here is my frame-by-frame, along with some production notes.

But first, in case you missed it:

Yowza! Here are my notes!

Page numbers are for the new edition, with the cover by the amazing Aykut Aydogdu, but should be close for all editions.)

0:07
Joey King as Tally Youngblood! Joey read the books when she was little, and always wanted to live in that world. So she got famous and made it happen.

0:12
Tally’s city! In the foreground we have Uglyville, made of gray concrete. But across the river are the soaring buildings of New Pretty Town! You don’t get to live in the castle until you are pretty.

0:18
A lovely image of Tally in a field of the white weed, the genetically modified tiger orchid that has disrupted biomes across the continent.
(p162 “The Side You Despise”)

0:28
Dorm uniforms! Note that the uniforms are gray, to remind the uglies that they don’t deserve nice things.
(p94 “Operation”)

0:33
Laverne Cox as Dr. Cable! I really enjoyed meeting Laverne and talking about conceptions of beauty, femininity, and personal transformation. (We also discussed our fave East Village hangouts in the ’90s.)

0:37
Safety fireworks, “beautiful useless things,” are a symbol throughout the series. They look like normal fireworks, but have been rendered harmless, kinda like pretties. The New Pretty Town scenes are drenched in them!
(p4 “New Pretty Town”)

0:45
Love this glimpse of Tally’s morpho—a digital model of her post-surgery appearance. In a weird way, the uglies sitting around tuning their faces on screens is the most prophetic part of the book. I mean, Uglies came out in 2005. We had Photoshop back then, but instant filters weren’t a thing.
(pp 38-9 “Facing the Future”)

0:57
Chase Stokes as Peris! Peris’s nickname is Nose, so we gave Chase a big nose. Also, he was kinda too pretty to be an ugly. I mean, pretty much ALL actors are?

Except . . . even pretty people in this world are called uglies, unless they’ve had the operation.

0:58
Based upon a novel, which is by me! Available at all fine retailers.

1:00
Brianne Tju as Shay! What you can kinda see here is that Shay and Tally are chilling on their hoverboards, thirty feet in the air. This scene was actually shot with them suspended from cranes. Joey and Brianne became instant friends on set, which shines through in their performances.
(p31-7 “Wipe Out”)

1:04
Surgery tank. Peris is about to get a nose job.

1:07
Tally in a pig mask! From the party scene in New Pretty Town. Love it when random (though deeeeeply symbolic) things in a book make it into a movie.
(p10 “New Pretty Town”)

1:08
Pretty Peris. (Less nose, more abs!)

1:22
The wild! We had a gray, concrete Uglyville and a hyper-lurid New Pretty Town, so we had to also capture the beauty of the wild. “Nature, at least, didn’t need an operation to be beautiful. It just was.”
(p219 “Suspicion”)

1:27
Keith Powers as David! Keith did a great job making David charismatic enough to lead a revolution, while also giving him an outsider feel. After all, he’s the only non-city kid left in the entire world. (That’s why he has the only old-fashioned name.)

1:32
Glimpses of the Smoke in the background. All the buildings in the Smoke were real, inside and out, with sod roofs planted with actual grass for camouflage, and Smokey gear inside. A simply amazing set. Love the production design in this movie. Can’t wait till you see more.

But who’s that schmuck with the wheelbarrow? It’s full of books, and we’re in the Smoke, so it must be the Boss–the crotchety old librarian guy. (p188, “The Model”)

He is played by me.

I even had a line, which I wrote myself—secretly, so the cast’s reaction was a genuine WTF on the first take. But the line was cut in editing, because the Boss’s snark didn’t go with the positive emotion of Tally’s arrival in the Smoke.

Hollywood is cruel. I will take no further questions.

1:42
Hoverboarding on the ancient roller coaster—perhaps THE iconic Uglies scene. (pp 61-3 “The Rust Ruins”)

The hoverboards are a combination of CGI and practical rigs that allowed the actors to actually fly on wires! (More on hoverboards after Sep 13, on my TikTok and Insta.)

1:49
Jan Luis Castellano as Croy! He is a very lovable Croy.

1:58
In the book, we briefly meet the Rangers, environmental warriors who use vintage Rusty helicopters to burn out the white weed.
(p170 “Bug Eyes”)

In the movie, however, the Smokies have their own helicopter. Because Jan Luis wanted a flamethrower. Because flamethrowers.

2:12
THE SMOKE LIVES! (“Over the Edge” p352)

Yes, it does.

For more analysis, check out my TikTok about the trailer.

See you September 13, only on Netflix.

The final book in the new Uglies series, YOUNGBLOODS, is out now. As the title suggests, it marks the return of Tally Youngblood.

Buy it at your local bookstore, or click here.

From the flap copy:

Frey has spent her life in a family of deceivers, a stand-in for her sister, manipulated at her father’s command. Free from them at last, she is finding her own voice—and using it to question everything her family stood for.

Tally was once the most famous rebel in the world. But for over a decade, she’s kept to the shadows, allowing her myth to grow. Now she sees that the revolution she led has not created a stable world. Freedom, she observes, has a way of destroying things.

As the world is propelled further into conflict and conspiracy, Frey and Tally join forces to put a check on the people in power, while trying to understand the limits of their own.

With YOUNGBLOODS, Scott Westerfeld brings back his most iconic character and merges the IMPOSTORS and UGLIES series into a breathtaking tale of rivalry, rebellion, and repercussion.