Jess Walter 
Financial Lives of the Poets 
A Novel

Darkly funny, surprisingly tender . . . witheringly dead-on.Los Angeles Times Named one of the years best novels by:Time Salon.com Los Angeles Times NPR/Fresh Air New West Kansas City Star St. Louis Post-Dispatch A comic and heartfelt novel from the #1New York Timesbestselling author of Beautiful Ruins and Cold Millionsabout how we get to the edge of ruinand how we begin to make our way back.What happens when small-time reporter Matthew Prior quits his job to gamble everything on a quixotic notion: a Web site devoted to financial journalism in the form of blank verse?Before long, he wakes up to find himself jobless, hobbled with debt, spying on his wife’s online flirtation, and six days away from losing his home. . . . Until, one night on a desperate two a.m. run to 7-Eleven, he falls in with some local stoners, and they end up hatching the biggestand most misbegottenplan yet.