A stylish and suspenseful historical page-turner following an up-and-coming journalist who stumbles onto a web of secrets, deceptions, and mysteries at a popular new literary magazine--inspired by the true story of CIA intervention in Cold War American arts and letters. "Wonderfully entertaining and slyly subversive. Caroline Woods pens a story that will linger in the memory!" —Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network Louise Leithauser's star is on the rise. She’s filing stories at her boyfriend Joe's new literary magazine and the novel she's writing is going swimmingly. But when she overhears Joe and his business partner fighting about listening devices and death threats, Louise can't help but investigate, and learns that someone is pulling Joe’s strings--someone who doesn't want artists criticizing Uncle Sam. Meanwhile, opportunities are falling in Louise's lap that she'd have to be crazy to refuse. Can Louise let doors keep opening for her, while the establishment censors her fellow writers? As her suspicions mount, Louise's novel is colored by her newfound knowledge. And when she’s forced to consider her future sooner than she planned, Louise needs to decide whether she can trust Joe for the rest of her life.  Full of period detail and nail-biting tension, Caroline Woods channels 1950s New York glamour as Louise comes face to face with shocking secrets, brutal sexism, and life or death consequences. The Lunar Housewife is a historical thriller rich with meaning for modern readers. "An elegant novel of political and cultural suspense. . . the Cold War intrigue it conjures is gripping, and Louise’s dilemmas and adventures will hold sympathetic readers in thrall." -- The Wall Street Journal " The Lunar Housewife  is wonderfully entertaining and slyly subversive. Caroline Woods pens a story that will linger in the memory!" —Kate Quinn, New York Times  bestselling author of  The Alice Network " The Lunar Housewife is written with tremendous skill and an ingenious form. Caroline Woods is an imaginative artist, and this is serious fiction that resonates with a keen intelligence." --Ha Jin, National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner award winning author of Waiting “Caroline Woods’ The Lunar Housewife is a smart, stylish page-turner that is at once a Cold War spy thriller, historical fiction, a sci-fi book-within-a-book, and a thumping good read. Woods keeps the tension almost unbearably high making it impossible to put down.” --Lara Prescott, New York Times bestselling author of The Secrets We Kept “This cleverly inventive yet authentic–feeling early Cold War thriller from Woods ( Fräulein M. ) takes on the New York publishing world from a woman’s perspective, while containing a novella-length American-Soviet space romance written by the protagonist with parallels to her own life. . . The suspense builds as Woods shifts between the main narrative and the space romance, which provides a window into Louise’s frustrated mindset about gender dynamics, politics, and power. This is a delightfully different variety of spy story.” -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Woods' historical thriller tells two related stories, one about the CIA's audacious plan to use American literature as propaganda against the Soviets, the other about one woman's attempt to escape the cloister in which men are determined to confine her . . . The tantalizing slice of literary history, combined with the revealing look at good-old-boy sexism in postwar publishing, will draw readers across multiple genres.” -- Booklist (starred review) "An addictive binge of a read that’s equal parts intelligent introspection and nail-biting suspense." -- BookPage "This book is perfect . . . subversive, wildly creative." --Writer's Digest "Woods offers up a heady mix of espionage, historical fiction, and literary mystery . . . set in a richly-evoked midcentury downtown New York literary scene, where her protagonist finds herself somewhere at the intersection of the artistic vanguard and the spymaster’s crosshairs." --CrimeReads "Woods goes for the jugular of American pieties, intellectual assumptions, and social norms, without sparing the Iron Curtain’s side." -- Avenue "From page one you know you’re in the hands of an immensely talented novelist. Caroline Woods takes on the 1950s Cold War era by spinning a historical thriller filled with censorship, espionage and danger that leaves both the narrator and reader wondering who and what they can trust. A sheer delight from start to finish.”  --Renee Rosen, bestselling author of The Social Graces “A young woman navigates the treacherous terrain of Manhattan’s early 1950s literary scene . . . The truth, as Woods suggests . . . is more complicated: The U.S. establishment is not just blacklisting artists, but, through violence and/or bribery, censoring any cultural reference that does not glorify American capitalism. A sinister message t