"My Juliet" tells the story of a struggling artist, Sonny LaMott, and his obsessive love for Juliet Beauvais, who is Thanatos and Eros combined in one nasty, irresistible package. Juliet returns to New Orleans after her years as an "actress" in California, thinking that her mother is about to die and that she will inherit the family mansion. But discovering that she's been tricked by her mother, this most fatale of femmes once more sets out to seduce the damaged Sonny -- who still can't resist her fifteen years after she crushed his heart.

Juliet is an unforgettable character; and the novel's prose and dialogue richly evoke New Orleans. The gothic elements -- graveyards, debauchery, decay, melodrama -- are superbly rendered, yet the author's rich sense of humor and pity for his characters make the novel vibrant and original. Bradley excels at sustaining a sense of impending doom, which hovers over all the players and creates a delicious tension out of our expectation of the worst yet to come.

"I have not begun a single book of John Ed Bradley's that I did not feel compelled to read in a single sitting. "My Juliet" lives up to the shining promise of his brilliant first novel Tupelo Nights. "My Juliet" is a dazzling virtuoso performance". -- Harry Crews, author of Celebration and A Feast of Snakes