Jinwoo Chong '21, author of the award-winning novel Flux, will release his third novel, Club Nine Tails, with Random House in March 2027–a novel about family, reconciliation, and a cross-country adventure.
“Smart, funny, fast, and a little bit furious, Club Nine Tails is a highly entertaining novel filled with surprising scenes and unforgettable characters,” says Patrick Ryan, New York Times bestselling author of Buckeye. “Jinwoo Chong is at the top of his game.”
The novel follows Connor Carby, a college student who until recently, considered himself a lucky guy. His mother is a Tony-winning producer; his father is an attorney with his name on the door and his face on billboards. But on Connor’s twenty-first birthday, he discovers that his father has vanished after embezzling millions of dollars and that his mother has been imprisoned as an accessory to his crimes. Turns out, Connor isn’t so lucky after all.
With nowhere to go, fraud charges piling up, and his accounts frozen, Connor turns to his chaotic and crotchety uncle, Moses, the owner of Club Nine Tails, a Hell’s Kitchen gay bar, to help him access a portion of his inheritance. There’s just one catch: Connor must first join him on a cross-country trip to Los Angeles, where he’s opening a new club. Together, they embark on a journey that takes them from motel parking lots to technicolor Dollywood, dodging questions, uncomfortable truths, and increasingly suspicious authorities along the way.
“This book is tenderness personified in all its magical forms,” says Carolyn Huynh, author of GMA Book Club pick The Fortunes of Jaded Women and Fetal Position. “Family can be the most bittersweet life lesson of them all. What better way of finding found family than through your own? You just have to be prepared to dance.”
Chong is the author of the novels I Leave It Up to You and Flux, a New York Times Editor’s Choice and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. His work has appeared in Guernica, The Southern Review, The Rumpus, LitHub, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Electric Literature, and received recognition from the Best American Short Stories anthology and a special mention from the Pushcart Prizes. He lives in New Jersey with his husband and cat.
Forthcoming on March 2, 2027, Club Nine Tails is available now for preorder.
