Event Details
Charlottesville author Bruce Holsinger discusses his acclaimed 2025 novel Culpability
Join the Bards Alley booksellers at Mary Riley Styles Public Library in Falls Church for a presentation by local author Bruce Holsinger!
In addition to being named an Oprah's Book Club pick, his latest novel Culpability was included on "best of 2025" lists by NPR, the Washington Post, and the New Yorker. It follows the Cassidy-Shaw family in the aftermath of a car crash that exposes their deepest secrets and most tragic flaws.
A book signing will follow Holsinger's talk. Culpability can be purchased at the event along with paperback copies of backlist titles, such as The Displacements and The Gifted School.
RSVP for free through Mary Riley Styles here: https://www.mrspl.org/event/draft-author-talk-30600
ABOUT THE BOOK
When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating them all in the tragic accident.
During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident—suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI.
Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bruce Holsinger is the author of Culpability, the 116th selection of Oprah’s Book Club and hailed by Oprah Winfrey as “a must-read for all generations.” His four previous novels include The Gifted School, which won the Colorado Book Award, and The Displacements, the inaugural title in the United Nations Read for Action Book Club. He has also written many works of nonfiction, most recently On Parchment: Animals, Archives, and the Making of Culture from Herodotus to the Digital Age. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and many other publications, and he has been profiled on NPR’s Weekend Edition, Here & Now, and Marketplace. He teaches English at the University of Virginia and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.