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)

“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