An explosive new novel brimming with love, secrets, and enchantment by Jandy Nelson, Printz Award–winning and New York Times bestselling author of I’ll Give You the Sun.
Abandonment, sexual assault, child abuse, addiction.
The Fall siblings live in hot Northern California wine country, where the sun pours out of the sky, and the devil winds blow so hard they whip the sense right out of your head.
Years ago, the Fall kids’ father mysteriously disappeared, cracking the family into pieces. Now Dizzy Fall, age twelve, bakes cakes, sees spirits, and wishes she were a heroine of a romance novel. Miles Fall, seventeen, brainiac, athlete, and dog-whisperer, is a raving beauty, but also lost, and desperate to meet the kind of guy he dreams of. And Wynton Fall, nineteen, who raises the temperature of a room just by entering it, is a virtuoso violinist set on a crash course for fame . . . or self-destruction.
Then an enigmatic rainbow-haired girl shows up, tipping the Falls’ world over. She might be an angel. Or a saint. Or an ordinary girl. Somehow, she is vital to each of them. But before anyone can figure out who she is, catastrophe strikes, leaving the Falls more broken than ever. And more desperate to be whole.
With road trips, rivalries, family curses, love stories within love stories within love stories, and sorrows and joys passed from generation to generation, this is the intricate, luminous tale of a family’s complicated past and present. And only in telling their stories can they hope to rewrite their futures.
Don't just take our word for it...
“Sublime, intricate, and dazzling, When the World Tips Over kept opening and opening before me like a glorious map of treasures. I loved all of its delightful, flawed, sensitive characters, and the magic inside each of them. Jandy Nelson has created an epic and intimate tale. I adored it.”
– Helena Fox, award-winning author of How It Feels to Float and The Quiet and the Loud
“In this multigenerational epic sprinkled with magic, Nelson (I’ll Give You the Sun) tackles grief, love, and the ways in which history commingles with the present. . . . Intricately rendered [and told] via myriad alternating perspectives . . . Nelson takes readers on a whirlwind journey toward a profound and satisfying destination.”
– Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“[A] complex family saga about self-understanding, relationships, secrets, and passed-down family trauma. . . . Traversing a wide range of topics and emotions through multiple perspectives and formats, World contemplates each with due attention and nuance, [achieving] a quilt-like story both in its warmth and in its patches coming together to make a beautiful narrative.”
– Booklist
Taste the very first page
Encounter #1 with the Rainbow-Haired Girl
The morning of the day twelve-year-old Dizzy Fall walked into the path of the speeding eighteen-wheeler and encountered the rainbow-haired girl, everything was going wrong. In the divorce with her best friend, Lizard, who now went by his real name, Tristan, Lizard-now-Tristan had been granted popularity, a cool haircut, and a girlfriend named Melinda.
Dizzy had been granted nothing.
They’d been a twosome since first grade, wandering around in each other’s innermost secrets, baking through the list of Pastry Magazine’s most ambitious desserts as well as their mutual favorite activity: surfing the inter- net for pertinent information regarding existence. Lizard’s area of expertise was weather and natural disasters while Dizzy’s was all cool things.
Lately those cool things had been stories about saints who rose into the air in fits of ecstasy, Himalayan yogis who could turn their bodies into stone, Buddha, who’d made duplicates of himself and shot fire from his fingers (yes!). Reading about these woo-woo things made Dizzy’s soul buzz and Dizzy wanted a buzzy soul. A buzzy everything.
Also, recently, pre-divorce, Dizzy and Lizard had kissed for three seconds to see if they’d feel the endorphins Lizard learned about online or the spontaneous internal explosions Dizzy read about in the romance novels her mother kept behind the literary ones on the shelf, particularly Live Forever Now starring Samantha Brooksweather, which was Dizzy’s favorite. Lizard thought romance novels were totally useless, but Dizzy learned so much from them. She wanted the door of her wild femininity…
You might also like
MysteryDebut NovelEarly ReleaseIncludes a Dog
A Half-Baked Murder
Combining French luxury and THC, Baked by Chloe will take pot brownies to another level. That is, until a creepy past acquaintance rehashes old drama and shockingly turns up dead—landing Aunt Dawn as the number one murder suspect.
ThrillerMysteryContemporaryDebut NovelLGBTQIA+
Liar, Dreamer, Thief
A young woman’s carefully constructed fantasy world implodes in this brilliantly conceived novel that blurs distinctions between right and wrong, comedy and tragedy, imagination and reality.
ContemporaryHumourIncludes a Dog
The Sweet Spot
In the heart of Greenwich Village, three women form an accidental sorority when a baby—belonging to exactly none of them—lands on their collective doorstep.
Literary FictionMagical Realism
How to Turn Into a Bird
From the award-winning author of How to Order the Universe, María José Ferrada beautifully details the life and lessons of an unconventional man and the boy who loves him.
RomanceLiterary FictionHistorical FictionDebut NovelLGBTQIA+
The New Life
A brilliant and captivating debut, in the tradition of Alan Hollinghurst and Colm Tóibín, about two marriages, two forbidden love affairs, and the passionate search for social and sexual freedom in late 19th-century London.
The Key to My Heart
A Goodreads Most Anticipated Romance. A heartwarming novel about hope after loss as a young widow receives mysterious messages of love from the “must-buy author” (Jodi Picoult) of Eight Perfect Hours.
ThrillerDebut NovelIncludes a Dog
All the Dark Places
A savage murder rocks a quiet Massachusetts suburb, revealing the dark secrets at the center of a group of friends in this stylish debut thriller for fans of Megan Miranda and Shari Lapena.
RomanceContemporaryDebut Novel
Twice in a Lifetime
The Time Traveler’s Wife meets Oona Out of Order in this imaginative and moving debut novel of a love more powerful than time.
None of This Would Have Happened If Prince Were Alive
Perfect for fans of Maria Semple and Jennifer Weiner, this smart and witty debut novel follows Ramona through the forty-eight hours after her life has been upended by the discovery of her husband’s affair and an approaching Category Four hurricane.
Aesthetica
In a debut novel as radiant as it is caustic, a former influencer confronts her past—and takes inventory of the damages that underpin the surface-glamour of social media.
ContemporaryDebut NovelIncludes a Cat
Meredith, Alone
Will have you laughing and crying as Meredith, after spending three years inside her house, figures out how to rejoin the world one step at a time.
RomanceMysteryDebut NovelIncludes a Dog
The Socialite’s Guide to Murder
The hotel was her refuge, but scandal is afoot—and a killer stalks the halls in this charming series debut perfect for fans of Rhys Bowen and Ashley Weaver.
RomanceContemporaryDebut Novel
Closer to Okay
Weaving culinary delights with an honest, appraising look at how we deal with the world when it becomes too much, Closer to Okay is the comfort food we all need in these, well, crazy times.
Historical FictionIncludes a Dog
Gilded Mountain
Set in early 1900s Colorado, the unforgettable tale of a young woman who bravely faces the consequences of speaking out against injustice.
MysteryContemporaryDebut Novel
The Marsh Queen
Loni must decide whether to delve beneath the surface into murky half-truths and either avenge the past or bury it, once and for all.