The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady [Paperback]

AChicago TribuneBest Book of the Year

Marylou Ahearn is going to kill Dr. Wilson Spriggs. In 1953, the good doctor gave her a radioactive cocktail without her consent, and Marylou has been plotting her revenge ever since. When she discovers his whereabouts in Florida, she hightails it to Tallahassee, moves in down the block from where he resides with his daughter, Caroline, and begins the tricky work of insinuating herself into his life. But she has no idea what a nest of yellow jackets she’s stumbled into. Spriggs is senile, his daughter’s on the verge of collapse, and his grandchildren are a mess of oddballs, leaving Marylou wondering whether she’s really meant to ruin their lives … or fix them.

“The best kind of page-turner—one with heart.” —The Boston Globe
 
“The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady, is the sort of book that one devours quickly and then thinks, ‘I’ll have another just like that, please.’ The trouble, of course, is that it’s difficult to find another book quite like this one.” —The New Yorker 

 
“Charmingly off-kilter. . . . A smart and improbably cheerful tale about family that’s actually quite sweet at its core.” —People
 
“It’s impossible not to love a novel that starts out with a 77-year-old woman planning cold-blooded murder, especially when the old lady in question is as charming and funny as Stuckey-French’s Marylou Ahearn.” —Dan Chaon, author ofAwait Your Reply

“One funny story. . . . Stuckey-French makes her domestic satire work precisely by not backing away from its darkness—and also by giving us characters who are complex and believable enough to stay with even when the going gets weird.” —St. Petersburg Times
 
“An absorbing, accomplishelcr