Nicotine

Named a Best Book of 2016 by Slate and the Dallas Morning News
Unemployed— and unmoored by her father’ s death— recent college graduate Penny Baker decides to fix up her dad’ s childhood home in New Jersey. Instead, she finds it occupied by a group of friendly anarchist squatters who have renamed the property “ Nicotine. ” The residents (united in defense of smokers’ rights) and the other squatters in the neighborhood provide a sense of community and purpose that Penny feels she’ s desperately lacking. She soon moves into a nearby residence, becoming enmeshed in their political fervor, and falling irredeemably in love with an asexual resident by the name of Rob. But the rest of Penny’ s family has other plans— her mother and older half-brother would prefer to evict the squatters and gentrify the neighborhood. As the Baker family’ s lives begin to converge around Nicotine, Penny grows ever bolder and more determined to protect it.