List of All Possible Desires

SOHO PRESS, May 2026

In postwar Paris, a boy is seduced by his mysterious nanny into a world of adult secrets. In 1950s New York, a young caretaker struggles to protect her charge, a married woman weakened by a stroke. In 1969, a fragile cousin wanders into the Royals’ jazz-soaked townhouse, where music, sex and ruin intertwine. And at the heart of these stories is Rainey Royal herself, struggling to come of age in Greenwich Village, reinventing herself as an artist despite neglect, even cruelty in the tumultuous’70s and ’80s.

By turns shocking, erotic and deeply humane, List of All Possible Desires is a haunting portrait of family and history—written with Landis’s trademark beauty and precision.

This book is joined by deluxe reissues of the novel in stories Normal People Don’t Live Like This and the novel Rainey Royal. Each stands on its own, but together they create one of the richest and most intense worlds in contemporary American fiction.

Praise & Reviews

“A dazzling cycle of stories revolving around a complicated, fascinating, talented young badass…Other people write with words; Landis seems to write with mercury.”
—Kirkus (starred review)

“Landis is a sublime observer. Her characters seem to feel several things at once and even the most deluded and destructive have their own motives and intricacies…the drama of it–convincng, startling, wrenching–brings revelations at every turn.”
—The New York Times (Joan Silber)

“Dylan Landis is the quintessential bard of the do-it-yourself morality of the ’70s, its experiments and failures. These twelve stories achingly demonstrate how wounded children become wounding adults, toggling between states of burn-it-to-the-ground rebellion and moments of pure grace.”
–Janet Fitch, New York Times bestselling author of White Oleander

“Dazzling, electrifying, and razor-sharp, this collection brilliantly expands Dylan Landis’s New York of the 1970s and ’80s, a world where fragile, defiant girls grow into clear-eyed, truth-seeking women. Gorgeously crafted and fearlessly told—I savored every page.”
–Natalie Baszile, author of Queen Sugar 

“These stories have the elegance and assurance of classics—individual jewels strung together into a stunning and mesmeric whole.”
–Dan Chaon, author of One of Us

“The Rainey Royal books are the greatest literary puzzle since the Neapolitan Quartet, full of complex relationships among women and within families, revealing their full meaning only once you place the final piece.”
–Pamela Redmond, New York Times bestselling author of Younger

“There is something undeniably classic about Dylan Landis’s new novel in stories, List of All Possible Desires. I wouldn’t be surprised if she were an actual time traveller; her visions of  postwar Europe and 1970s New York are that sharply observed. Her clarity and restraint reminded of the best stories by Mavis Gallant and Elizabeth Bowen. This is a delicious book for readers who love beautiful language and want characters they will think about for a long time.”
–Katie Crouch, New York Times bestselling author of Embassy Wives

“An electrifying and exquisite writer, Dylan Landis crafts stories with a surgical precision. Rainey Royal’s universe continues to expand and contract in this latest collection, crossing decades and continents, from post-war Paris to a townhouse on West 10^th Street in Manhattan. From the bruising title story, List of All Possible Desires, to the deliciously transgressive Tattoo, I can’t get enough of her characters.”
–Susan Coll, USA Today  bestselling author of The Literati