Nicotine

Named a Best Book of 2016 by Slate and the Dallas Morning NewsUnemployed—and unmoored by her father’s death—recent college graduate Penny Baker decides to fix up her dad’s childhood home in New Jersey. Instead, she finds it occupied by a group of friendly anarchist squatters who have renamed the property “Nicotine.” The residents (united in defense of smokers’ rights) and the other squatters in the neighborhood provide a sense of community and purpose that Penny feels she’s desperately lacking. She soon moves into a nearby residence, becoming enmeshed in their political fervor, and falling irredeemably in love with an asexual resident by the name of Rob. But the rest of Penny’s family has other plans—her mother and older half-brother would prefer to evict the squatters and gentrify the neighborhood. As the Baker family’s lives begin to converge around Nicotine, Penny grows ever bolder and more determined to protect it.