The Sandersons Fail Manhattan: A Novel

Heavily plotted contemporary satire, skewering everything from the arcane rules of social register types, casually hypocritical financial heavyweights, and eager educators, in the vein of the author's previous novel, CAMPUSLAND.

“A laugh-out-loud mash-up of Bonfire of the Vanities and Mean Girls.” —Christopher Buckley, author of Thank You for Smoking

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. He’s also looking for any string to pull to get his maddeningly indifferent daughter Ginny into Yale. Ellie, his wife, is a newcomer to New York who only wants to fit in, while 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 admits its first trans student, only to have her mysteriously disappear. As a frenzied search begins, 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.

• | Author: Scott Johnston
• | Publisher: St Martin's Press
• | Publication Date: Aug 18, 2025
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Hardback
• | ISBN-13: 9781250384782
• | ISBN-10: 1250384788