Quizlit’s Book of the Month April 2026 is Jonathan Miles’s darkly comic gem, Eradication. A broken man confronts a broken world on an uninhabited Pacific island, where a conservation assignment becomes a moral reckoning.
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Book of the Month April 2026
Eradication by Jonathan Miles
A moving fable in which a grieving man, confronts a broken world on an island overpopulated by goats.
Reeling from tragedy, a former jazz musician-turned-schoolteacher named Adi answers a job listing advertising a chance to save the world. The assignment: to spend five weeks alone on the tiny, isolated Pacific Island of Santa Flora and reckon with its invasive population of goats that’s sent the ecological balance severely out of whack..
What follows, however, is anything but balanced. The threats to the once-Edenic island, Adi soon learns, aren’t exactly what his employers said they were – and, complicating things further, he discovers he’s not alone on the island. Fearful for his own life, and for the fate of the island, Adi spends his sun-drenched days rooting out the true threat to Santa Flora, and, by extension, to the world it occupies – and the desperate steps he must take to eradicate it.
Eradication is an utterly unforgettable reading experience and the work of a truly singular imagination.
“In Eradication, Jonathan Miles tackles the brutal paradoxes of ecological conservation with both unflinching clarity and comedic flair. When saving an imperilled Eden means eliminating [sacrificing?] one species — whose only crime is to ‘refuse to stop living’ — to protect dozens more, there are no easy answers. A deft, unsettling exploration of what it means to play God.”
—Maria Reva, author of Endling
“Beautifully weird, eerie, unexpected — a story for our times, and all powered by the writer’s tremendous narrative imagination.”
—Kevin Barry, author of The Heart in Winter and Night Boat to Tangier
“Incisive . . . An excellent storyteller, Miles leavens the grim material with moments of dark comedy and shepherds the plot to a series of poignant revelations. . . . This one sneaks up on the reader.”
–Publishers Weekly
“Provocative . . . Miles’ captivating and entertaining novel poses awkward and thought-provoking questions about how to address the climate crisis.”
—Booklist
“[A] clever, innovative tale . . . Miles contrasts lush descriptions of the island setting with snippets of bleakly casual dialogue, channeling both realism and absurdity. . . . [Eradication] can be savored in just one or two sittings.”
—BookPage
Also by the Author
Want Not
A highly inventive, corrosively funny story of our times, Want Not exposes three different worlds in various states of disrepair—a young freegan couple living off the grid in New York City; a once-prominent linguist, sacked at midlife by the dissolution of his marriage and his father’s losing battle with Alzheimer’s; and a self-made debt-collecting magnate, whose brute talent for squeezing money out of unlikely places has yielded him a royal existence, trophy wife included. Want and desire propel these characters forward toward something, anything, more, until their worlds collide, briefly, randomly, yet irrevocably, in a shattering ending that will haunt readers long after the last page is turned.
Anatomy of a Miracle
Rendered paraplegic after a traumatic event four years ago, Cameron Harris has been living his new existence alongside his sister, Tanya, in their battered Biloxi, Mississippi neighborhood where only half the houses made it through Katrina. One stiflingly hot August afternoon, as Cameron sits waiting for Tanya during their daily run to the Biz-E-Bee convenience store, he suddenly and inexplicably rises up and out of his wheelchair.
In the aftermath of this “miracle,” Cameron finds himself a celebrity at the center of a contentious debate about what’s taken place. And when scientists, journalists, and a Vatican investigator start digging, Cameron’s deepest secrets—the key to his injury, to his identity, and, in some eyes, to the nature of his recovery—become increasingly endangered. Was Cameron’s recovery a genuine miracle, or a medical breakthrough? And, finding himself transformed into a symbol, how can he hope to retain his humanity?
Brilliantly written as closely observed journalistic reportage and filtered through a wide lens that encompasses the vibrant characters affected by Cameron’s story, Anatomy of a Miracle will be read, championed, and celebrated as a powerful story of our time, and the work of a true literary master.
If you enjoyed Book of the Month April 2026, check out 5 Sensational New Books for April 2026
