Pre-Order Bill Roorbach's BEEP

Print: A Bookstore is proud to be working with Maine author Bill Roorbach in support of his forthcoming novel, Beep. 

All copies will be signed by the author and can be personalized—make sure to include any requests in the order comments during checkout!

Cover image for BEEP featuring a woodcut illustration of a squirrel monkey on a branch above a city sidewalkIn the tradition of Shelby Van Pelt's Remarkably Bright Creatures, an ebullient, funny—and hugely original— novel about the friendship between a brilliant young girl and a perceptive squirrel monkey, the power of youth, and the way forward for a planet in crisis. 

In this immensely enjoyable novel, it takes a sweet and personable squirrel monkey, Beep, to help us see the world we live in more clearly. While intending only to go deeper and higher into the Costa Rican rain forest to find a mate, he instead meets Inga, a kindly and loving American teenager on vacation with her family. Inadvertently, often hilariously, Beep makes his way back to New York with Inga, and with her courageously devoted help—and a bit of inspiration from a visiting Greta Thunberg, along with a dramatic zoo escape—and with the help of just about every animal on earth, Beep manages to change the destiny of the world. Along the way, he has a great deal to say about humanity and the divisions among us, our alien cities, our strange practices, our false superiority, our vanity, our entitlement, our folly, as well as our beauty, and our promise, unfulfilled.

With a cast of equally engaging and perceptive animals, Beep is irresistibly appealing. Neither earnest nor preachy, it is full of humor and inspiration and remarkable new ways of understanding how we live. Beep conveys an urgent message—the increasing threats to our planet—lightly, urging us to wake up while there is still time.

Advanced Praise for Beep


Beep is a wonder, both monkey and novel, our hero's curious, questing soul, the ebullient brilliance of Roorbach’s prose. Wildly beautiful, funny, moving, entrancing, and hopeful, this is a story for our times, a ray of warm and generous light, a stern warning, a triumph of storytelling." 
—Kate Christensen, author of  Welcome Home, Stranger

"Beep is a work of glorious strangeness, invention, and hope.  In this, Bill Roorbach's most original book yet, his simian hero makes monkeys of us all." 
—Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of She's Not There and co-author of Mad Honey


Headshot of Bill Roorbach, a white man in his late 60s. He has a white mustache and beard that goes past his chin and is wearing a white button-up shirt.Bill Roorbach is the author of eleven books, including the Montana Award-winning Lucky Turtle, The Girl of the Lake, the Kirkus Prize finalist The Remedy for Love, the bestselling Life Among Giants, and the Flannery O’Connor Award–winning collection Big Bend. Roorbach has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His craft book, Writing Life Stories, has been in print for over twenty-five years. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, the AtlanticThe New York Times Book ReviewPloughsharesGrantaEcotoneNew York magazine, The American Scholar, and other publications. He lives in Maine with his family.

Pre-Order Now Badge
Beep: A Novel By Bill Roorbach Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9781643755618
Availability: Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: Algonquin Books - July 16th, 2024