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THE FORTUNE SELLER

Rachel Kapelke-Dale

YELLOWJACKETS meets INVENTING ANNA in this novel about class, income inequality, and the role white women play in maintaining patriarchal power structures.
When middle-class rider Rosie returns to her Ivy League university after a year abroad, she finds that her elite group of equestrian friends has been infiltrated by a mysterious transfer student, Annalise, a talented tarot reader. But when money starts disappearing from one of the rider's bank accounts, Annalise's role in the group is thrown into question, with devastating consequences - and causes that will take Rosie years to fully excavate. As she begins a new job at a hedge fund, Rosie begins to uncover who Annelise truly was with the help of an enigmatic stranger linking Annalise to the uber-rich. Taking place at Brown University and in New York in 2005 and 2006, FORTUNE SELLER is set in a moment when anything seemed possible - right before financial systems came crumbling down. Rachel Kapelke-Dale is the author of The Ingenue (2022), The Ballerinas (2021), and co-author of Graduates in Wonderland (Penguin 2014). She received a BA from Brown University, where she rode on the varsity equestrian team, an MA from the Université de Paris VII, and a PhD from University College London. She currently lives in Paris.
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Published 2024-02-13 by St. Martin's Press

Comments

Delicious and addicting, The Fortune Seller is the book of my occult horse girl dreams. Ambition, excess, equestrians--all filtered through the tarot and the question of fate versus luck. Kapelke-Dale has constructed a glittering tale of sacrifice and privilege. I guarantee you will not be able to put it down.

This book combines so many things I enjoy...who doesn't want to read about horse girls and fortune tellers? Delightful.

Brimming with competitions, rivalries amid friendships, and secrets within lies...Fans of Kapelke- Dale's signature twisty suspense will be riveted."

This dark page-turner has excellent storytelling (strange deaths! class warfare!), characters you'll love to hate, and fascinating insights into the twists and turns of friendship.

Kapelke-Dale . perfectly portrays the complexities of class and status among privileged peers, where wealth outweighs talent and ambition spawns cruelty. .Sophisticated with just the right dose of sinister, this coming-of-age story doesn't shy from the grisly power dynamics of privilege.

Kapelke-Dale is fluent in the double-edged language of female friendship. I ripped through The Fortune Seller, her captivating, fast-paced novel about upper-crust, ride-or-die housemates at Yale whose petty cruelties take a sinister turn. A refreshing look at girl power and identity, longing and belonging, and fate and free will, The Fortune Seller reveals the dark impulses that fuel our most intense, intoxicating relationships.

Propulsive and engrossing, The Fortune Seller deftly examines the ways in which our lives are shaped by luck and by fate, illustrating the sometimes grizzly consequences of tempting either. Rachel Kapelke-Dale has (once again) captured the complexities of female friendship, ambition, and privilege with razor-sharp insight and sparkling prose, all set in the evocative worlds of equestrian competitions, dark academia, and the New York elite. Tarot cards offer hints at what's to come in each chapter, but this story kept me on my toes throughout; I absolutely devoured it.

Kapelke-Dale skillfully blends class concerns, character development, and a menacing atmosphere, emerging with an intoxicating mystery that defies easy categorization. Readers will be tempted to devour it in a single sitting.

The Fortune Seller is pure magic. A juicy campus novel suffused with complex friendship dynamics and an insider-outsider story of one woman's struggle to fit in with her high-flying peers, Kapelke-Dale weaves suspense with sharp prose for a read that's both fast-paced and thought-provoking. The novel's tarot cards may illuminate the future, but this much is clear: I'd follow Kapelke-Dale anywhere.