The Chosen and the Beautiful

An Indie Next Pick!

A Best of Summer Pick for TIME Magazine | CNN | NBC News | CBS News | Book Riot | The Daily Beast | Lambda Literary | The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Goodreads | Bustle | Veranda Magazine | The Week | Bookish | St. Louis Post-Dispatch | Den of Geek | LGBTQ Reads | Pittsburgh City Paper | Bookstr | Tatler HK

A Best Fantasy Novel from the Last 10 Years for Book Riot

A Best of the Year Pick for NPR

“A vibrant and queer reinvention of F. Scott Fitzgerald's jazz age classic. . . . I was captivated from the first sentence.”—NPR

"Nghi Vo is one of the most original writers we have today."—Taylor Jenkins Reid on Siren Queen

“A sumptuous, decadent read.”—The New York Times

“Vo has crafted a retelling that, in many ways, surpasses the original.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Immigrant. Socialite. Magician.

Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society—she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.

But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.

Nghi Vo’s debut novel, The Chosen and the Beautiful, reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice.