Janelle
New York Times Bestselling Novelist
Award Winning Writer & Journalist
Travels from: Los Angeles, CA

“[Brown’s] most gripping, thought-provoking and haunting novel yet . . . I would argue that What Kind of Paradise should be required reading, a work of fiction that functions nearly as nonfiction, akin to Kim Brooks’s Small Animals or Tara Westover’s Educated. . .” — Bookreporter

Janelle Brown is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels What Kind of Paradise, I’ll Be You, Pretty Things, Watch Me Disappear, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, and This Is Where We Live. Her books have been translated into more than two dozen languages around the world. She’s the recipient of the American Library Association’s Alex Award, longlisted for the Mark Twain Literary Prize, and several of her novels are currently in development for television.

Her journalism and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, Elle, Wired, Self, RealSimple, The Los Angeles Times, and numerous other publications. Previously, she worked as a senior writer at Salon, and began her career as a staff writer at Wired during the dotcom boom years, working on seminal Web sites like HotWired and Wired News. In the 1990s, she was also the editor and co-founder of Maxi, an irreverent (and now, long-gone) women’s pop culture Webzine.

A native of San Francisco and graduate of UC Berkeley, she has since defected to Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband Greg and their two children.

Janelle's Featured Titles

What Kind of Paradise: A Novel

Random House |
Literary Fiction

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A teenage girl breaks free from her father’s world of isolation to discover that her whole life is a lie in this “absorbing and well-crafted” (The Washington Post) novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Things and Watch Me Disappear.

“A mesmerizing blend of coming-of-age and psychological suspense, set against the birth of the internet age.”—People

The first thing you have to understand is that my father was my entire world.

Growing up in an isolated cabin in Montana in the mid-1990s, Jane knows only the world that she and her father live in: the woodstove that heats their home, the vegetable garden where they try to eke out a subsistence, the books of nineteenth-century philosophy that her father gives her to read in lieu of going to school. Her father is elusive about their pasts, giving Jane little beyond the facts that they once lived in the Bay Area and that her mother died in a car accident, the crash propelling him to move Jane off the grid to raise her in a Waldenesque utopia.

As Jane becomes a teenager she starts pushing against the boundaries of her restricted world. She begs to accompany her father on his occasional trips away from the cabin. But when Jane realizes that her devotion to her father has made her an accomplice to a horrific crime, she flees Montana to the only place she knows to look for answers about her mysterious past, and her mother’s death: San Francisco. It is a city in the midst of a seismic change, where her quest to understand herself will force her to reckon with both the possibilities and the perils of the fledgling internet, and where she will come to question everything she values.

In this sweeping, suspenseful novel from bestselling author Janelle Brown, we see a young woman on a quest to understand how we come to know ourselves. It is a bold and unforgettable story about parents and children; nature and technology; innocence and knowledge; the losses of our past and our dreams for the future.

I’ll Be You: A Novel

Random House |
Mystery/Thriller

Two identical twin sisters and former child actors have grown apart—until one disappears, in this “cleverly crafted and psychologically nuanced” (Time) suspense novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Things.

“An addictive thriller that will keep readers burning through pages . . . sneakily hypnotic.”—Los Angeles Times

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Public Library, PopSugar

“You be me, and I’ll be you,” I whispered.

As children, Sam and Elli were two halves of a perfect whole: gorgeous identical twins whose parents sometimes couldn’t even tell them apart. They fell asleep to the sound of each other’s breath at night, holding hands in the dark. And once Hollywood discovered them, they became B-list child TV stars, often inhabiting the same role.

But as adults, their lives have splintered. After leaving acting, Elli reinvented herself as the perfect homemaker: married to a real estate lawyer, living in a house just blocks from the beach. Meanwhile, Sam has never recovered from her failed Hollywood career, or from her addiction to the pills and booze that have propped her up for the last fifteen years.

Sam hasn’t spoken to her sister since her destructive behavior finally drove a wedge between them. So when her father calls out of the blue, Sam is shocked to learn that Elli’s life has been in turmoil: her husband moved out, and Elli just adopted a two-year-old girl. Now she’s stopped answering her phone and checked in to a mysterious spa in Ojai. Is her sister just decompressing, or is she in trouble? Could she have possibly joined a cult? As Sam works to connect the dots left by Elli’s baffling disappearance, she realizes that the bond between her and her sister is more complicated than she ever knew.

I’ll Be You shows Janelle Brown at the top of her game: a story packed with surprising revelations and sharp insights about the choices that define our families and our lives—and could just as easily destroy them.

Pretty Things: A Novel

Random House |
Women’s Fiction

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Who’s really following you on social media? The scam of a lifetime brings together two wildly different women in this page-turning thriller about greed, legacy, and betrayal from the New York Times bestselling author of Watch Me Disappear.

An ID Book Club Selection • “It’s Dynasty meets Patricia Highsmith.”—The Washington Post

Nina once bought into the idea that her fancy liberal arts degree would lead to a fulfilling career. When that dream crashed, she turned to stealing from rich kids in L.A. alongside her wily Irish boyfriend, Lachlan. Nina learned from the best: Her mother was the original con artist, hustling to give her daughter a decent childhood despite their wayward life. But when her mom gets sick, Nina puts everything on the line to help her, even if it means running her most audacious, dangerous scam yet.

Vanessa is a privileged young heiress who wanted to make her mark in the world. Instead she becomes an Instagram influencer—traveling the globe, receiving free clothes and products, and posing for pictures in exotic locales. But behind the covetable façade is a life marked by tragedy. After a broken engagement, Vanessa retreats to her family’s sprawling mountain estate, Stonehaven: a mansion of dark secrets not just from Vanessa’s past, but from that of a lost and troubled girl named Nina.

Nina’s, Vanessa’s, and Lachlan’s paths collide here, on the cold shores of Lake Tahoe, where their intertwined lives give way to a winter of aspiration and desire, duplicity and revenge.

This dazzling, twisty, mesmerizing novel showcases acclaimed author Janelle Brown at her best, as two brilliant, damaged women try to survive the greatest game of deceit and destruction they will ever play.

Watch Me Disappear: A Novel

Spiegel & Grau |
Mystery/Thriller

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The disappearance of a beautiful, charismatic mother leaves her family to piece together her secrets in this propulsive novel for fans of Big Little Lies—from the bestselling author of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything and the upcoming Pretty Things.

“Watch Me Disappear is just as riveting as Gone Girl.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Who you want people to be makes you blind to who they really are.

It’s been a year since Billie Flanagan—a Berkeley mom with an enviable life—went on a solo hike in Desolation Wilderness and vanished from the trail. Her body was never found, just a shattered cellphone and a solitary hiking boot. Her husband and teenage daughter have been coping with Billie’s death the best they can: Jonathan drinks as he works on a loving memoir about his marriage; Olive grows remote, from both her father and her friends at the all-girls school she attends.

But then Olive starts having strange visions of her mother, still alive. Jonathan worries about Olive’s emotional stability, until he starts unearthing secrets from Billie’s past that bring into question everything he thought he understood about his wife. Who was the woman he knew as Billie Flanagan?

Together, Olive and Jonathan embark on a quest for the truth—about Billie, but also about themselves, learning, in the process, about all the ways that love can distort what we choose to see. Janelle Brown’s insights into the dynamics of intimate relationships will make you question the stories you tell yourself about the people you love, while her nervy storytelling will keep you guessing until the very last page.

This Is Where We Live: A Novel

Spiegel & Grau |
Literary Fiction

A “wildly entertaining” (San Francisco Chronicle) novel about a young marriage unraveling under the pressure of a subprime mortgage and ruthless Hollywood economics—from the New York Times bestselling author of Watch Me Disappear

“Part social satire, part melodrama, part intimate domestic portrait . . . Brown has an uncanny eye for contemporary characters and settings.”—Los Angeles Times

Claudia and Jeremy, a young married couple (she’s an aspiring filmmaker, he’s an indie musician), are on the verge of making it. Her first film was a sensation at Sundance and is about to have its theatrical release; he’s got a new band that is a few songs shy of an album. They’ve recently purchased their first home—a mid-century bungalow with a breathtaking view of Los Angeles—with the magical assistance of an adjustable-rate mortgage.

But a series of seismic events—the tanking of Claudia’s film, the return of Jeremy’s manipulative, art-star ex-girlfriend, and the staggering adjustment of their monthly mortgage payments—threaten to deal a crushing blow to their dreams of the bohemian life and their professional aspirations and make them question their shared vision of the future.

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything: A Novel

Spiegel & Grau |

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A smart, comic page-turner “executed with nerve and wit” (The New York Times Book Review)  following a Silicon Valley family in free fall over the course of one eventful summer, from the New York Times bestselling author of Watch Me Disappear

“Addictive . . . [an] unapologetically soapy mix of teen sex, quarter-life crises, food porn and mean-girl politics . . . a summery, old-fashioned page-turner.”—Salon

When Paul Miller’s pharmaceutical company goes public, making his family IPO millionaires, his wife, Janice, is sure this is the windfall she’s been waiting years for—until she learns, via messengered letter, that her husband is divorcing her (for her tennis partner!) and cutting her out of the new fortune. Meanwhile, four hundred miles south in Los Angeles, the Millers’ older daughter, Margaret, has been dumped by her newly famous actor boyfriend and left in the lurch by an investor who promised to revive her fledgling post-feminist magazine, Snatch. Sliding toward bankruptcy and dogged by creditors, she flees for home where her younger sister Lizzie, 14, is struggling with problems of her own. Formerly chubby, Lizzie has been enjoying her newfound popularity until some bathroom graffiti alerts her to the fact that she’s become the school slut.

The three Miller women retreat behind the walls of their Georgian colonial to wage battle with divorce lawyers, debt collectors, drug-dealing pool boys, mean girls, country club ladies, evangelical neighbors, their own demons, and each other, and in the process, they become achingly sympathetic characters we can’t help but root for, even as the world they live in epitomizes everything wrong with the American Dream.

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CREATIVITY AND BALANCE IN THE AGE OF AI

Like it or not, we’re being dragged kicking and screaming into the AI age. As much as we may dream of rediscovering to a Thoreau-like utopia – unplugging our laptops, throwing away our phones, and returning to nature – there is no going back. Technology has disrupted our social fabric, made us all smartphone addicts, driven us apart. And now, AI is taking on our creativity too, replacing human creation with AI slop and attempting to replace the work of authors and artists and filmmakers.

And yet, technology also undeniably a marvel that has changed the world in many positive ways. So how do we live with this dichotomy? How do we navigate our nostalgia for the world that was, and the reality of the AI future that is here? As a former tech reporter and novelist who has been writing about the Internet for 3 decades, Janelle is uniquely positioned to discuss these issues, and how we can find balance and creative authenticity in the digital age.

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THE JOYS OF THE “DIFFICULT” WOMAN

Ah, the “unlikeable” character in fiction. Typically, these are difficult women who do things that go against conventional expectation. They are mothers who abandon their children, spouses who have affairs, they are addicts and thieves and liars. They unintentionally sabotage the relationships that mean the most to them.

And they are undoubtedly the most memorable characters we will read.

Janelle will delve into why “difficult” women in fiction are the most compelling – and how she writes them. This talk will also explore why strong, challenging women are more important than ever in fiction – and how they reflect the ongoing shifts around women’s roles in society.

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BURN IT ALL DOWN: MODERN FANATICS & IDEALOGUES

How does someone end up joining a cult? What is the slippery slope that makes an otherwise normal person do something that feels radical: Become an eco-terrorist, or a Q-Anon believer, or a political ideologue who will break the law – or even kill – for their belief system?

Throughout her books, Janelle has explored the psychology of fanaticism, and has insights into how the Internet age has enabled ever-more-extreme belief systems.

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DOING THE BOOK TO FILM HUSTLE

Of Janelle’s seven novels, six of them have been optioned by Hollywood for TV or film adaptations! How many of them have you had a chance to watch?

Answer: None. Because none of them have actually been made.

As a Hollywood insider – married to a film director, and a lon- time resident of LA – Janelle has a very funny perspective on the book-to-film hustle. This humorous talk will dive into twenty years of her almost adaptations – from Nicole Kidman to Natalia Portman to David E Kelly – that will give you the nitty gritty, not-so-glamorous reality of what it means to adapt a bestselling novel for the screen in Hollywood, and why so few of them ever see the light of day.

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HOW TO BEGIN A NOVEL

This is an adaptation of a course that Janelle taught with Liz Moore at the Kauai Writer’s Conference, which delves into the three main subjects you need to think about when you’re starting a book: People, Place & Problem. How do you approach each one, when trying to get a new novel off the ground? What role does each play in building a world and a story?

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WAIT, THE 90’s ARE HISTORICAL FICTION NOW?

… a humorous talk that delves into the writing of What Kind of Paradise, a “historical fiction” novel about the birth of the Internet; which was based on Janelle’s own history as a staff writer at Wired Magazine in San Francisco in the mid-1990s. How do you write about a time and place that was so pivotal to the way we live now, and yet is remote history to the average Gen Z reader who didn’t live through 9/11? And why do we already have so much nostalgia for this time before smartphones – not so very long ago, and yet hard to even fathom now.

Janelle’s Other Writing

Janelle’s Events Link

Janelle’s News

Honors, Awards & Recognition

HONORS, AWARDS & RECOGNITION

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERS:
Pretty Things, Watch Me Disappear, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything
USA TODAY BESTSELLERS
What Kind of Paradise, Pretty Things, Watch Me Disappear

American Library Association Alex Award (2025)
Mark Twain Literary Prize Longlist (2025)
Goodreads Choice Award Finalist (2025)
Book of the Month Pick & Lolly Award Finalist (2025)
Jimmy Fallon Book Club Finalist (2025)
Washington Post Best Book of 2025
Audiophile – Earphones Award (2025)
LibraryReads – Hall of Fame (2025)
Target Book Club Pick (2020, 2017)
Amazon Book of Year (2020)
Costco Pennies Book Club Pick (2020)
Southern California Independent Bookseller Association Mystery Prize (2017)
Barnes & Noble Best Mystery (2017)
LibraryJournal Best Book of 2008

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