Getting Even/Letting Go is a taut, darkly comic novel about money, memory, and the psychic wreckage of a marriage long after love has ended.On a single spring afternoon in New York City, Gene Millsa once-successful writer now living on fumeshosts friends in his apartment while waiting for an art auction that could change everything. The paintings on the block were made by his ex-wife, now a global art star. They depict her affair, her ambition, and the life she detonated when she left him. Gene believes selling them is justice. Or survival. Or both. As the clock ticks toward the auction lots, Gene spirals through old resentments, legal threats, parental guilt, financial desperation, and the corrosive pleasure of retaliation. What unfolds is an intimate portrait of a man trying to convert emotional injury into cash, to reclaim dignity through ownership, and to convince himself that getting even might finally allow him to let go. With biting wit and relentless psychological precision, Julian Tepper explores the moral gray zones of divorce, custody, authorship, and art-world powerwhere love becomes leverage, memory becomes inventory, and victory may cost more than defeat. Getting Even/Letting Go is a novel about what remains when intimacy turns transactional, and whether freedom can ever be purchased without exacting a final, private price.

A meditation on the limits of what we can and cannot have, set in a cityNew Yorkthat would have us think that we can have it all, Cooler Heads is a tour de force and impossible to put down, a literary triumph.Julian Tepper's fourth novel, Cooler Heads, is a story about modern love. With a triangulation of lovers and spouses, young children and careers struggling to get off the ground, in Celia and Paul we encounter two people in that pocket of life when the fight to figure out who we are and what we want burns brightest.

Set in New York's late-night bars and back rooms, Balls is a darkly comic portrait of ambition, desire, and masculine fragility. Henry Schiller is thirty, a drifting songwriter and lounge pianist, in love with a woman younger, sharper, and more talented than he isone already looking past him toward other men and a bigger future. When Henry is diagnosed with testicular cancer, his romantic anxieties collide with a far more existential reckoning, forcing him to confront the limits of love, art, and his own vanishing sense of control.

Between the Records examines brothers, fathers, rock and roll, and the personal demons therein; both musical and familial.Jules and Adam Newman's complex, often hostile, relationship has long fueled their music careers as they followed in their father's footsteps. After the release of their debut record, and while struggling to write tracks for the followup, the brothers begin to clash. Jules, the younger brother, feels cast aside and ignored by Adam, who has long been accustomed to having things his own way. From the studio to the stage and across the countless miles in between, Julian Tepper's third novel is a moody and heady work of autofiction based on his days in the Natural History, which he and his brother formed in 2001.

"...Julian Tepper emerges as a modern hybrid of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow."—Philipp Meyer, New York Times Best-Selling author of The Son and American RustJules and Adam Newman's complex, often hostile, relationship has long fueled their music careers as they followed in their father's footsteps. After the release of their debut record, and while struggling to write tracks for the followup, the brothers begin to clash. Jules, the younger brother, feels cast aside and ignored by Adam, who has long been accustomed to having things his own way. From the studio to the stage and across the countless miles in between, Julian Tepper's third novel is a moody and heady work of autofiction based on his days in the Natural History, which he and his brother formed in 2001. Between the Records examines brothers, fathers, rock and roll, and the personal demons therein—both musical and familial.

Julian Tepper’s fourth novel, Cooler Heads, is a story about modern love. With a triangulation of lovers and spouses, young children and careers struggling to get off the ground, in Celia and Paul we encounter two people in that pocket of life when the fight to figure out who we are and what we want burns brightest. A meditation on the limits of what we can and cannot have, set in a city—New York—that would have us think that we can have it all, Cooler Heads is a tour de force and impossible to put down, a literary triumph.

Getting Even/Letting Go is a taut, darkly comic novel about money, memory, and the psychic wreckage of a marriage long after love has ended.On a single spring afternoon in New York City, Gene Millsa once-successful writer now living on fumeshosts friends in his apartment while waiting for an art auction that could change everything. The paintings on the block were made by his ex-wife, now a global art star. They depict her affair, her ambition, and the life she detonated when she left him. Gene believes selling them is justice. Or survival. Or both. As the clock ticks toward the auction lots, Gene spirals through old resentments, legal threats, parental guilt, financial desperation, and the corrosive pleasure of retaliation. What unfolds is an intimate portrait of a man trying to convert emotional injury into cash, to reclaim dignity through ownership, and to convince himself that getting even might finally allow him to let go. With biting wit and relentless psychological precision, Julian Tepper explores the moral gray zones of divorce, custody, authorship, and art-world powerwhere love becomes leverage, memory becomes inventory, and victory may cost more than defeat. Getting Even/Letting Go is a novel about what remains when intimacy turns transactional, and whether freedom can ever be purchased without exacting a final, private price.

A meditation on the limits of what we can and cannot have, set in a cityNew Yorkthat would have us think that we can have it all, Cooler Heads is a tour de force and impossible to put down, a literary triumph.Julian Tepper's fourth novel, Cooler Heads, is a story about modern love. With a triangulation of lovers and spouses, young children and careers struggling to get off the ground, in Celia and Paul we encounter two people in that pocket of life when the fight to figure out who we are and what we want burns brightest.

Set in New York's late-night bars and back rooms, Balls is a darkly comic portrait of ambition, desire, and masculine fragility. Henry Schiller is thirty, a drifting songwriter and lounge pianist, in love with a woman younger, sharper, and more talented than he isone already looking past him toward other men and a bigger future. When Henry is diagnosed with testicular cancer, his romantic anxieties collide with a far more existential reckoning, forcing him to confront the limits of love, art, and his own vanishing sense of control.

Between the Records examines brothers, fathers, rock and roll, and the personal demons therein; both musical and familial.Jules and Adam Newman's complex, often hostile, relationship has long fueled their music careers as they followed in their father's footsteps. After the release of their debut record, and while struggling to write tracks for the followup, the brothers begin to clash. Jules, the younger brother, feels cast aside and ignored by Adam, who has long been accustomed to having things his own way. From the studio to the stage and across the countless miles in between, Julian Tepper's third novel is a moody and heady work of autofiction based on his days in the Natural History, which he and his brother formed in 2001.

"...Julian Tepper emerges as a modern hybrid of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow."—Philipp Meyer, New York Times Best-Selling author of The Son and American RustJules and Adam Newman's complex, often hostile, relationship has long fueled their music careers as they followed in their father's footsteps. After the release of their debut record, and while struggling to write tracks for the followup, the brothers begin to clash. Jules, the younger brother, feels cast aside and ignored by Adam, who has long been accustomed to having things his own way. From the studio to the stage and across the countless miles in between, Julian Tepper's third novel is a moody and heady work of autofiction based on his days in the Natural History, which he and his brother formed in 2001. Between the Records examines brothers, fathers, rock and roll, and the personal demons therein—both musical and familial.

Julian Tepper’s fourth novel, Cooler Heads, is a story about modern love. With a triangulation of lovers and spouses, young children and careers struggling to get off the ground, in Celia and Paul we encounter two people in that pocket of life when the fight to figure out who we are and what we want burns brightest. A meditation on the limits of what we can and cannot have, set in a city—New York—that would have us think that we can have it all, Cooler Heads is a tour de force and impossible to put down, a literary triumph.