Jane and Dan at the End of the World

by Colleen Oakley

Genres: General Fiction; Family Life; Women's Fiction; Humorous Fiction

Synopsis

"Hilarious."—People

Date night goes off the rails in this hilariously insightful take on midlife and marriage when one unhappy couple find themselves at the heart of a crime in progress, from the USA Today bestselling author of The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise.

A ZIBBY OWENS MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025!
A GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BOOK CLUB PICK!

Jane and Dan have been married for nineteen years, but Jane isn’t sure they’re going to make it to twenty. The mother of two feels unneeded by her teenagers, and her writing career has screeched to an unsuccessful halt. Her one published novel sold under five hundred copies. Worse? She’s pretty sure Dan is cheating on her. When the couple goes to the renowned upscale restaurant La Fin du Monde to celebrate their anniversary, Jane thinks it’s as good a place as any to tell Dan she wants a divorce.

But before they even get to the second course, an underground climate activist group bursts into the dining room. Jane is shocked—and not just because she’s in a hostage situation the likes of which she’s only seen in the movies. Nearly everything the disorganized and bumbling activists say and do is right out of the pages of her failed book. Even Dan (who Jane wasn’t sure even read her book) admits it’s eerily familiar.

Which means Dan and Jane are the only ones who know what’s going to happen next. And they’re the only ones who can stop it. This wasn’t what Jane was thinking of when she said “’til death do us part” all those years ago, but if they can survive this, maybe they can survive anything—even marriage.

Release date: March 11, 2025

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 368

Sample

Prologue

“Do I need a lawyer?”

Jane’s voice trembles. She’s never been interviewed by the police before. She’s trying to remember the last time she even spoke to a police officer and thinks it must be nineteen years ago when she was nine weeks pregnant with Sissy, driving (above the speed limit) home from her granddad’s funeral where she had eaten too many ham biscuits, causing the top button of her jeans to pop off when she sat down in the driver’s seat. When the policeman said “Do you know why I pulled you over?” she burst into tears, all the emotions of her granddad dying, and Dan not being able to be with her because he had to work, and the embarrassment of her pants being undone rushing to the surface at once. The man in uniform was so bewildered, he pretended he had a call on the radio and darted back to his car, shouting, “Slow down and be safe!” over his shoulder.

She’s only asking because everyone who’s ever seen a cop drama knows you’re always supposed to ask for a lawyer.

This police officer—Kip, as he had introduced himself, and Jane thought that was a rather jaunty name for a cop. Informal. Missing the gravitas that someone who wore a pistol holster slung round his waist should inherently have—cocks his head to the right. Dirt mars his forehead and his hair is mussed. Jane thinks she sees a twig stuck in it, and she wonders for the first time what she must look like. He grins kindly.

“No, I don’t think that will be necessary.” He pauses. “Unless you’re secretly one of the criminals.”

A sound escapes Jane’s throat—high-pitched and hyena-like. She’s unsure if she’s ever made a sound like it in her life. “I think they were more like . . . activists,” she says.

“Activists,” Kip repeats.

“Yes.”

“With guns.”

“Yes,” Jane repeats, her voice a bit weaker.

“OK.” Kip clears his throat. “Let’s move on. You’ve been through quite the ordeal and I’m sure you want to get home to your family. All I need is a witness statement from everyone involved. Can you tell me what brought you to the restaurant La Fin du Monde last night?”

Jane clears her throat. “It was, uh . . . my anniversary. Our anniversary. My husband, Dan, and I. Our nineteenth.”

Kip checks his notes. “Huh. That’s not what your husband said.”

“You’ve talked to Dan?” Jane’s heart squeezes, remembering the last time she saw her husband. And she wishes for the hundredth time they’d had a chance to get their stories straight.

“He said it was your twentieth.”

Jane closes her eyes longer than a blink—out of both relief and annoyance. Of course he did.

“No matter,” Kip says. “And can you tell me in your own words what happened? Starting with when the activists”—he looks at Jane pointedly—“came into the restaurant.”

Jane suddenly finds it important to try to smooth her hunter green dress down, as if it’s not ripped in two places and covered in soot. Having been awake for nearly twenty-six hours—and having just been through an ordeal—she thinks again of her appearance. The bags under her eyes are likely even more pronounced than usual. She reaches up to comb her fingers through her hair and finds it snarled—impossible to get through.

“Take your time,” Kip says, but he looks weary, and he says it in a way that conveys he wishes she’d hurry the hell up so he could get home. She wonders if he has a family. A wife. His ring finger is bare.

Jane opens her mouth to speak, but a knock on the door interrupts them.

“Zimmerman wants to see you.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Excuse me for a minute.”

Kip leaves the tiny room and Jane is alone. Typically, she would use time by herself to observe. A writer, she always tries to log details for future work—especially unexpected specifics. Like the fact that instead of an empty cement block room with a long table and a two-way mirror like in every crime television show Jane’s ever seen, she’s in what appears to be a storage closet. Overflowing filing cabinets squeezed together, a mess of office detritus—staplers, folders, boxes of pens strewn about. “This is temporary,” Kip said apologetically when he opened the door to it and gestured her in. “We’re building a new precinct. Much bigger. State-of-the-art!”

But her mind isn’t on her surroundings as much as what she’s going to say when Kip comes back. Only seconds ago, she wished for time to get her thoughts together, but now it only ratchets up her panic. Is she going to lie? To a police officer? Given her actions of the past twelve or so hours, it wouldn’t be the worst thing she’s done, but still. She takes a deep breath and exhales, counting to five. He just needs a statement! He said it himself. And that’s what she’ll give him. She’ll keep it short, simple, and stick to the truth as much as possible.

The door opens and Jane startles. Kip reenters, but this time is accompanied by another officer—this one older, his chin covered with white-gray stubble, his skin carved by time.

“You’re Jane Brooks,” the older cop says, peering at her.

“Yes.”

“As in Jane Brooks, the author?”

Jane would normally be thrilled by this question. Before her one and only novel had been published six years ago, she dreamt of people coming up to her on streets, in airports, fawning over her, clutching dog-eared and worn copies of her book to their chests, able to recite passages from memory. You’re Jane Brooks! Would you mind terribly to sign this? And she wouldn’t mind! She would be honored.

And yet, this was the second time in two days someone recognized her as the author Jane Brooks, and she was already quite content to never ever hear it again.

“You wrote this book.” He holds up the familiar cover—the one that brought tears to her eyes when she first saw it on her computer screen so many years ago. Her name! On the cover of a book!

Now Jane’s knees go weak at the sight of it. Her stomach flops like a fish on dry land. She nods. It wouldn’t do to lie in this situation.

“This book that is about”—he glances at the back jacket copy, as if he’s already read it but still can’t quite believe what it says—“terrorists taking over a restaurant?”

Jane holds up a finger. “Technically, it was a tearoom? Not a restaurant.”

The chief’s nostrils flare, which Jane takes to mean he’s not interested in the distinction.

“Do you know why this book—your book—was in the front seat of the van found at the crime scene?”

Jane knows. Oh, does she know.

“I don’t know,” she says. She finds that some situations warrant lying.

The second police officer’s eyes look as though they may pop out of his head at any second—like buttons off the waistband of too-tight jeans when one is nine weeks pregnant and has eaten too many ham biscuits at a funeral. “That’s awfully ironic, don’t you think?” He’s nearly shouting now, as if he and Jane are on an emotional seesaw and the calmer she responds, the higher his agitation grows.

And even though her heart is thundering and she’s dead panicked that she’s likely going to find herself under arrest and behind bars for the rest of her life, she whispers: “I think you mean coincidental.” She knows Dan finds it annoying, how she constantly corrects people’s grammar, but she’s positive there’s not one person on earth who uses the term ironic accurately, and she can’t help herself pointing it out any more than she can keep the sun from rising each day.

“What?” he roars.

Instead of repeating herself, she looks at Kip. “I can explain.”

This time his head cocks to the left instead of the right, as if appraising her from a new angle will give him some kind of perspective or insight he didn’t have before. And then he says: “I think you better.”

She clears her throat and opens her mouth. Closes it. She repeats this exercise—opening and closing her mouth like a glitching elevator door—six more times, until she realizes the problem: She can’t explain. Not really. She opens her mouth one final time more and says: “I think I need a lawyer.”