The Most Dangerous Place on Earth - Softcover

The characters in The Most Dangerous Place on Earth, Lindsey Lee Johnson's alarming, compelling and coolly funny debut novel about the goings-on in and out of a high school in Marin County, Calif., spend most of their time spectacularly failing to see beneath one another's surfaces. . . . Ms. Johnson's characters are unpredictable, contradictory and many things at once, which make them particularly satisfying. . . . Here's high school life in all its madness. -- Sarah Lyall * New York Times * In sharp and assured prose, roving among characters, Lindsey Lee Johnson plumbs the terrifying depths of a half-dozen ultraprivileged California high school kids. I read The Most Dangerous Place on Earth in two chilling gulps. It's a phenomenal first book. -- Anthony Doerr, New York Times bestselling author of All the Light We Cannot See An astonishing debut novel . . . With a stunning constellation of characters' voices and a fiercely compelling story, it's impossible to put down, or to forget. -- Megan Abbott In her superb first novel, Lindsey Lee Johnson deftly illuminates a certain strain of privileged American adolescence and the existential minefield these kids are forced to navigate. Elegantly constructed and beautifully written, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth reads like Jane Austen for this anxious era. -- Seth Greenland Gripping . . . Each chapter offers a vignette into a more complicated interior life-ones that involve inappropriate student-teacher relationships, cheating on SATs, drugs, sex, and house parties. . . . Lindsey Lee Johnson works a convincing assortment of different voices into her debut. * GQ * In her stunning debut, Johnson . . . explores the fallout among a group of teens-an alpha girl turned stoner, a striving B student, an Ivy League wannabe-who prove, in the end, less entitled than simply empty and searching. An eye-opener. * People (Book of the Week) * The characters in Lindsey Lee Johnson's debut novel affected me in a way I can't remember feeling since I binge-watched all five seasons of Friday Night Lights. . . . You'll walk away feeling like you could revisit a hallway drama armed with bulletproof perspective. * Glamour US * Elegant and impactful. * Sunday Mirror * Think Sweet Valley High reimagined by the cast of American Honey. ... It is such a good read. * Stylist *

Lindsey Lee Johnson holds a master of professional writing degree from the University of Southern California and a BA in English from the University of California at Davis. She has served as a tutor and mentor at a private learning center, where her focus has been teaching writing to teenagers. Born and raised in Marin County, she now lives with her husband in Los Angeles.