The follow-up to n+1 founding editor Chad Harbach’s beloved and bestselling debut novel The Art of Fielding—coming this October

At long last, the New York Times–bestselling author of The Art of Fielding returns with an immersive, generation-defining epic: Parties and weddings, messy hookups and marred friendships, art and love and grief—The Brightness follows the electric, chaotic, everything-can-happen lives of Pella Affenlight and her best friend, Irma, as they fumble their way into a larger world that won’t stop changing.

At 27, Pella’s life looks settled: she’s a recent college grad, engaged to Mike, her longtime boyfriend, and helping her friend Owen pull off his own destination wedding on Block Island. But over that wild wedding weekend, Pella’s past and present collide spectacularly, blowing up her plans and sending her spiraling toward an unplanned future in New York City.

There, in a city that’s equal parts glittering opportunity and cutthroat grit, Pella is forced to see herself in constantly changing lights as she wrestles with who she is and what she will become. As she cycles through possibilities and identities—is she an artist? A bartender? A scholar, a lover, a wife?—Pella navigates the heights and depths of passion and ambition, and the incalculable wages of love and loss.

In stunning scenes and spectacular characters—each drawn with an almost superhuman vividness and humanity—Chad Harbach captures that specific, shimmering anxiety of your twenties when life still feels wide open, even as hard and irreversible choices start closing in. Energetic, funny, and deeply human, this much-anticipated follow-up to The Art of Fielding confirms Chad Harbach as one of the most accomplished and deep-seeing writers of our time.

Praise for The Art of Fielding

“Harbach writes with a tender, egoless virtuosity . . . not since Lonesome Dove have I been so sorry to let a group of characters go.” ―Andres Corsello, GQ

“Zooms immediately into the pantheon of classics . . . a magical, melancholy story about friendship and the coming of age that marks the debut of an immensely talented writer . . . Mr. Harbach has the rare abilities to write with earnest, deeply felt emotion without ever veering into sentimentality, and to create quirky, vulnerable and fully imagined characters who instantly take up residence in our hearts and mind.” ―Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

“First novels this complete and consuming come along very, very seldom.” —Jonathan Franzen, New York Times–bestselling author of Crossroads

Chad Harbach is the author of the bestselling The Art of Fielding and a co-founder of n+1. He grew up in Wisconsin and attended Harvard and the University of Virginia. He lives in California.

To be published October 27, 2026 by Little, Brown and Company
672 pages
Hardcover
9780316455695