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The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford
  • Published: 28 January 2027
  • ISBN: 9781529932799
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240

The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford

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Four wives. Five murders. One very bad, very dead husband: A darkly comic, genre-bending debut novel from the acclaimed author of award-winning short story collection Heads of the Colored People

Four wives. Five murders. One very bad, very dead husband.

Rich Milford is dead. At last.

In the Black town of Newville, Oklahoma, Rich Milford has spent his life doing exactly as he pleases. A moonshiner, womaniser and self-styled prophet, he runs his eccentric household with rigid rules, strange beliefs and casual cruelty.

Now he’s been found dead.

At his funeral, the town gathers to speculate. The obvious suspects are the women closest to Rich: his four wives – Lally, Sophronia, Georgette and Vivianne – along with Alberta, the cook who has held the Milford household together for decades. Each of these women has a story to tell. Each believes, with absolute certainty, that she is the one who killed him.

As their accounts unfold, they reveal a household thick with secrets: forbidden love, suppressed rage, poisoned pies, stolen money, superstition, desire and grief. With each woman’s story, the truth splinters further, and the idea of a single version of events begins to collapse. Threaded through all of this is the voice of Newville itself – a sharp, gossipy, communal chorus that watches, judges and ultimately decides what justice will look like.
  • Published: 28 January 2027
  • ISBN: 9781529932799
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240
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About the author

Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Nafissa Thompson-Spires is the author of the award-winning, National Book Award longlisted short story collection, Heads of the Colored People. She earned a doctorate in English from ­­­­Vanderbilt University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from ­­­­­­the University of Illinois. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review Daily, New York Magazine’s "The Cut," The Root, The White Review, Ploughshares, 400 Souls: A Community History of African America 1619-2019, and The 1619 Project, among other publications. She is the recipient of a 2024 United States Artists Grant and a 2019 Whiting Award.
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Also by Nafissa Thompson-Spires

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Praise for The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford

Sharp, expansive, and polyphonic, a propulsive novel rendered with the wit and care present in all of Thompson-Spires’ work

RAVEN LEILANI, author of Luster

That Nafissa Thompson-Spires can conjure so much atmosphere in so few pages is both a feat and a mystery. From oil money to the rodeo, electric love and sudden death, Oklahoma positively blooms with violence and mercy alike. The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford unfolds with rare economy and force

KILEY REID, author of Come and Get It

Electric... a brilliant distillation of front-of-mind happenings—think, cults of personality, capitalism run amok in politics, and rampant societal distrust—structured like a stupefying line dance. In her uniquely powerful, humorous manner, Thompson-Spires takes on the interdependent clash of the traditional and the newfangled in this gobsmackingly excellent novel

The Center for Fiction 2026 First Novel Prize

Nafissa Thompson-Spires is a one of one. The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford presents her humor and heart at full tilt. A beautiful novel that makes you smile even as it hurts

NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars

Line by line, The Four Wives And Five Deaths of Richard Milford is mesmerizing, tautly written, and wickedly funny. A truly enjoyable work

JAMI ATTENBERG, author of A Reason to See You Again

A deeply satisfying novel that cracles as much with Thompson-Spires's singular intelligence as it does with mystery. I loved this ode to wild women, small towns, wily rumors and Black humor so much. A must-read

ANGELA FLOURNOY, author of The Wilderness