San Francisco, CA: McSweeneys (November 2024)

First Edition. Signed on the title page.

As new in decorated boards.

The millennium is drawing to a close. Pratt, a young Floridian who’s just finished a prison sentence he both did and didn't deserve, is looking to start a new life. But will he be able to shake his shady past? Brimming with tension, action, wry dialogue, and unexpected pathos, Penalties of June is John Brandon’s sixth book published by McSweeney’s.

With his distinct feel for the underbelly of his home state of Florida, Brandon takes readers into the forbidding corners of the Tampa Bay area—unsavory motels, secondhand shops, no-frills diners, and dubious used-car lots. Pratt navigates crime bosses and drug dealers on a perilous mission, his steed a trusty (if creaky) Chrysler LeBaron. Faced with an impossible choice, and the prospect of finally finding love after years behind bars, Pratt risks it all for a chance at making things right.

John Brandon has published five previous books with McSweeney’s—the novels Arkansas, Citrus County, A Million Heavens, and Ivory Shoals, and the story collection Further Joy. Arkansas was adapted into a movie of the same name starring Liam Hemsworth, Vince Vaughn, and John Malkovich. Citrus County was a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Award and was reviewed on the cover of the New York Times Book Review.