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From #1 New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Niven, a novel about America’s favorite TV family, whose perfect façade cracks, for fans of Lessons in Chemistry and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

For two decades, Del and Dinah Newman and their sons, Guy and Shep, have ruled television as America’s Favorite Family. Millions of viewers tune in every week to watch them play flawless, black-and-white versions of themselves. But now it’s 1964, and the Newmans’ idealized apple-pie perfection suddenly feels woefully out of touch. Ratings are in free fall, as are the Newmans themselves. Del is keeping an explosive secret from his wife, and Dinah is slowly going numb—literally. Steady, stable Guy is hiding the truth about his love life, and the charmed luck of rock ‘n roll idol Shep may have finally run out.

When Del—the creative motor behind the show—is in a mysterious car accident, Dinah decides to take matters into her own hands. She hires Juliet Dunne, an outspoken, impassioned young reporter, to help her write the final episode. But Dinah and Juliet have wildly different perspectives about what it means to be a woman, and a family, in 1964. Can the Newmans hold it together to change television history? Or will they be canceled before they ever have the chance?

Funny, big-hearted, and deeply moving, Meet the Newmans is a rich family story about the dual lives we lead. Because even when our lives aren’t televised weekly, we all have a behind-the-scenes.

Don't just take our word for it...

“Wonderful in every way, Meet the Newmans held me spellbound from the first page. Wildly addictive, thought-provoking and funny, and with a stellar cast I fell in love with on the spot. I adored it.”
—Rosie Welsh, New York Times bestselling author of Ghosted

“Tapping into a keen sense of family fault lines, Jennifer Niven gives us the Newmans—a seemingly perfect television family who, once the cameras stop rolling, are barely holding it together in a rapidly changing world. Warm, witty, and wise, this is a novel about reclaiming the narrative when the cost of pretending becomes too high to bear.”
—Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author of The Nest

“Turn off the TV and read this book! Meet the Newmans is a warm, humorous, emotionally resonant tale of family and feminism, exploring the hidden layers of our everyday lives.”
—Camille Perri, author of The Assistants and When Katie Met Cassidy

Taste the very first page

March 20, 1964

The night the world as she knew it ended, Dinah Newman stood at the stove of her Toluca Lake kitchen and stared down at the charred remains of pork chops. She had been doing fine until attempting the pineapple–soy sauce glaze. It had somehow caught fire, leaving the bottom of the pan black and sticky like a catastrophic oil spill. Like the one from last January in which three and a half million gallons flooded the Mississippi River and all the ducks had to be rescued and cleaned.

Dinah removed the skillet from the stovetop, carried it to the trash can, and dumped all of it—pan and contents—in. She was a terrible cook. Usually Flora Klausen, their longtime housekeeper, made dinner, but tonight Dinah had wanted to do it herself. It was a surprise for her husband, Del.

The kitchen was lined with shelves of cookbooks, most of them gifts from Del and their sons or well-meaning fans who assumed Dinah would enjoy reading about the origin of ham loaves or what to serve with creamed eggs or how to congeal a gelatin corned beef without losing its shape. After all, it was incomprehensible that the most famous cook in America, the spokeswoman for Hotpoint appliances and Pyrex kitchenware, couldn’t feed her family.

Tonight, though, she had wanted to show her husband she was making an effort, not with dinner but with them. Unfortunately, carbonized sweet-sour pork was not going to save her marriage. She would have to come up with something else.

January 2026