Culpability: A Novel

by Bruce Holsinger

Overview

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 that implicates them in the accident. 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781420530650
Publisher:	Thorndike Press, A Cengage Group
Publication date:	11/26/2025
Edition description:	Large Print
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Bruce Holsinger is the author of four novels, including The Displacements and The Gifted School, and many works of nonfiction, most recently On Parchment: Animals, Archives, and the Making of Culture from Herodotus to the Digital Age (Yale UniversityPress). His books have been recognized with the Colorado Book Award, the John Hurt Fisher Prize, the Philip Brett Award, the John Nicholas Brown Prize, the Modern Language Association’s Prize for a First Book, and others. 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 is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Holsinger teaches in the department of English at the University of Virginia, where he specializes in medieval literature and modern critical thought and serves as editor of the quarterly journal New Literary History. He also teaches craft classes and serves as board chairman for WriterHouse, a local nonprofit in Charlottesville.

Editorial Reviews

Culpability is a thought-provoking and riveting meditation on family, parental love, morality and artificial intelligence—and where they all intersect. A wise, propulsive, and deeply powerful novel.”—Laura Dave, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me 

“Bruce Holsinger has written a novel that is as propulsive as it is thought-provoking, a thriller with a brain. Reminiscent of the work of Richard Powers and Don DeLillo, Culpability is a compelling narrative about the perils of the digital age while addressing the challenges of living as a family. This novel might feel futuristic, except it isn't. It's happening now.”—Mary Morris, author of The Red House

“Culpability is whip-smart, fascinating, and gripping. It reads fast like a thriller, but this novel takes on the great cultural challenges of today: AI, electronic surveillance, and billionaire culture. A successful but fragile family collides with these forces and wrestles them down to life-size. I was recommending this book to friends before I'd even finished it.”—Stephen Kiernan, author of The Glass Chateau and The Baker's Secret

“In Culpability, Bruce Holsinger brings his sharp eye and fearless storytelling to one of the most urgent questions of our time: What does it mean to be responsible in a world shaped by systems we no longer fully control? Part family drama, part techno-thriller, this riveting novel traces the moral fallout of a self-driving car crash through the lens of a fractured family. With piercing insight and deep compassion, Holsinger captures the unsettling drift between human intention and algorithmic consequence—never losing sight of the fragile, fallible people at the heart of the story. Gripping, wise, and eerily prescient, Culpability is a family novel for the age of AI.”—Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train

“Culpability is a wildly timely book, an exploration of the ethics of the technology age tucked inside a gripping story about family and loyalty. It's equally emotional, entertaining, and important, and I lingered over every page.”—Janelle Brown, author of What Kind of Paradise

“A fascinating, thought-provoking novel. Bruce Holsinger is a master at combining revelatory social commentary about important, timely issues (AI this time) with deeply moving insights about family dynamics. I highly, highly recommend this book.”—Angie Kim, author of Happiness Falls

“Holsinger seems to have created his own subgenre of psychosocial thriller, spinning super-smart, propulsive page-turners out of zeitgeisty worries . . . If you are not already hooked on Holsinger, it’s time to join the club.”—Kirkus (starred review)

“In this twisty family drama . . . Holsinger grapples evocatively with the trade-offs of automated life. This timely tale leaves readers with much to chew on.”—Publishers Weekly 

“Culpability is the thinking man's page-turner, absolutely of the moment.”—Newsday 

From the Publisher