Freight
A Novel
Contributors
By Ryan Lowell
Formats and Prices
- On Sale
- Aug 11, 2026
- Page Count
- 224 pages
- Publisher
- Little, Brown and Company
- ISBN-13
- 9780316596534
Price
$14.99Price
$19.99 CADFormat
Format:
Preorder from Retailers:
Curtis, a newly hired dispatcher with a newly pregnant wife at home, holds a scrap of paper that identifies a semi-truck trailer that shouldn’t exist.
Billy Trask is a weathered and charismatic sociopath, who thinks nothing of quietly killing whomever may come in his way, and carefully guards the coordinates for a truck loaded with $10 million dollars-worth of Canadian pharmaceuticals.
Jimmy, Theo, and Sarah are the not-so-innocent locals poised to stand in Billy's way, none more so than Sarah, a local party girl with the heart and will of a colossus, and who will leave her own trail of mayhem and carnage in her 75-mile-per-hour wake.
In the rough-and-tumble tradition of Dennis Lehane, S.A. Cosby, and classic American noir, Freight is a thrill-ride view of the world of labor, life and love—a searing portrait of men at work and also at their worst.
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“Ryan Lowell brings the heat in Freight. It reads like a classic noir from the get-go, barreling along at an exceptional clip. It’s full of great sheer storytelling—gritty, lean, and unstoppable. What a debut.”William Boyle, author of Saint of the Narrows Street
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“Ryan Lowell's got the goods. Freight is a lean, propulsive caper with a wicked wit and voice for days.”Chris Holm, author of Red Right Hand
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“A full-throttle story about the underworld of trucking that—with absolute gritty authority and a misfit cast of characters—tours you through the truck stops, warehouses, rest areas, and roach motels that line the dark maze of interstate corridors. This book is so lowdown and dirty, your fingers will come away stained with blood and motor grease. I loved every page.”Benjamin Percy, author of The Ninth Metal
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“Ryan Lowell’s gritty debut Freight is a masterclass in economy: of words, of characters, and lean, mean explosive storytelling. Here is a writer who has put in the work, and it shows on every page.”Eli Cranor, author of Don't Know Tough
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“A brutal, clever, and devastating debut. Freight understands the psychology of work like few novels in recent years, laying bare how a job can hollow you out, define you, then trap you, all while turning the Can-Am highway into a moral pressure cooker running hot at all hours. After Freight, I’m ready to ride with Ryan Lowell wherever the road takes him, mile after unforgiving mile.”Eryk Pruitt, author of Something Bad Wrong and Blood Red Summer
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“Freight is the best road read I’ve read in years. Ryan Lowell writes beautiful, unconstrained dialogue that never loses its authenticity. . .. Fueled by diesel, grist, and greed, Freight is a spectacular debut foot to metal sounding its horn in the passing lane.”Lee Durkee, author of The Last Taxi Driver & Stalking Shakespeare
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“Ryan Lowell's Freight is riveting classic noir set against an environment of late-stage capitalism—a blistering tale of desperate characters teetering on the edge and the lengths they’ll go to keep from falling. It's one of the most exciting and beautifully written crime debuts I've read in years.”D.F. Hannah, author of Because the Night
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“Ryan Lowell’s Freight is a crime novel of uncanny inevitability, crafted with an insider’s knowledge not only of long-haul trucking, but of the traumas, obligations, and sins we freight around in this life. I just couldn’t put it down.”Smith Henderson, author of Make them Cry
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“This exceptional debut is the perfect balance of voice and propulsion: a barreling forward, momentum-driven plot that never scrimps on finding the pieces of humanity that make up its sprawling cast. In Freight, a semi-truck is headed toward the US-Canadian border, and as it moves, we meet the many, many people who seem to be involved in a plot to capture it. Freight has all the markers of classic noir along with a very contemporary sensibility about American crime.”CrimeReads
