The Sandersons Fail Manhattan: A Novel
By (Author) Scott Johnston
St Martin's Press
St Martin's Press
14th October 2025
18th August 2025
United States
General
Fiction
Urban communities / city life
Hardback
352
Width 28mm, Height 28mm, Spine 28mm
454g
William Sanderson is very rich, but you can always be richer. He's up for a huge promotion at investment giant Bedrock Capital, but there's one crucial hurdle he must clear first-assuming he can keep the HR department at bay. Meanwhile, he looks for any string to pull to get his maddeningly indifferent daughter Ginny into Yale. Ellie, his wife, is a Kentucky-raised newcomer to New York who only wants to fit in, and daughter #2, the shy Zoey, is happy just to make a new friend, even in the form of the unusual new girl who calls herself a goblin. Things turn upside down when the girls' exclusive school gets its first trans student and she mysteriously disappears, a frenzied search begins and the entire city frets about her fate. Somehow caught in the crosshairs are the Sandersons, a family desperately trying to navigate all the new cultural rules-and failing miserably. Scott Johnston has spoken to a variety of private clubs (Racquet, Colony, Southampton), institutions (eg, the Courdert Institute) and university groups (Jefferson Council of UVA). He's appeared on a number of podcasts, including "The Eric Metaxas Show" and "The Tucker Carlson Podcast", and is an adjunct professor at Yale University in the Economics Department.
"Scott Johnson is the sharpest and most fun to read satirical novelist writing today. Following on his brilliant debut novel Campusland, he turns his attention to Manhattan's ever-so-upper East Side, in a laugh-out loud mash-up of Bonfire of the Vanities and Mean Girls. This is D.E.I. at its best: Delicious, Entertaining, Intelligent. Did I mention fun Great fun." Christopher Buckley, author of Thank You for Smoking
"Here is the Bonfire of the Vanities of our time. Johnston casts his sharp eye on New York's most privileged circles, to devastating effect." Michael Cannell, author of Blood and the Badge: The Mafia, Two Killer Cops, and a Scandal that Shocked the Nation
"No one, but no one, captures the Zeitgeist like Scott Johnston, skirting that fine line between realism and mockery. He has captured a world out of control, hurtling toward destruction, that grips the reader as it slowly, then rapidly, descends into page-turning madness. When the pursuit of truth requires lies, the pursuit of justice requires injustice, when appearances are taken for reality, you get Orwell's nightmare--only here the anti-fascists are the fascists. The characters and situations are drawn so vividly that you'll find yourself yelling at some of the characters--though just which ones might depend on where you stand. When historians write the story of the first decades of the twenty-first century, The Sandersons Fail Manhattan will be one of their primary exhibits." Andrew Pessin, author of Bright College Years and Nevergreen
Previously the author of the best-seller Campusland (currently in development for television), SCOTT JOHNSTON grew up in Manhattan and graduated from Yale, where he later taught as an adjunct. He worked on Wall Street, including a stint in Hong Kong, and ran a quantitative hedge fund. More recently, Johnston shifted gears and co-founded and subsequently sold two tech startups. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia and blogs frequently about educational issues at the Naked Dollar.