"The best speculative fiction holds a mirror up to the world we actually live in. Soul Proprietor does that and then cracks the mirror and rents it out by the hour. Vance takes the absurdity of corporate culture completely seriously, applies it to eternal damnation, and somehow delivers something far richer than a joke. Imagine The Good Place if it had a sales quota. I finished it and immediately wanted to press it into someone else's hands." —Don Schechter, author of Ascendants
ARC available on Edelweiss (for reviewers, bookstores, and librarians!)
Launching September 22, 2026 from GFB!
The afterlife’s most profitable innovation? Renting souls to the living.
Tiffani Lutatio, a top salesfiend for Hell’s Soul Exchange, needs 142 more rentals to claw her way into Hell’s C-suite—with Fred, her fire-breathing dachshund, in tow. But in her rush to the bottom, she accidentally rents out a porn star’s recalled soul, violating one of Hell’s commandments. To retrieve it before Hell’s Information Agency finds out and stops her promotion, Tiffani must accept a humiliating bargain: Grant her customer three favors.
In present-day Portland, Oregon, where demons and angels haunt dive bars alongside the living, Tiffani and her band of misfit celestials and delinquent mortal teenagers stumble onto Hell’s most classified secret. There’s something far more dangerous for her career than even Hell’s worst demon: a conscience.
Soul Proprietor is darkly funny romp through a fantastical afterlife on Earth, where capitalism is eternal, good and evil are up for a rebrand, and redemption might finally be possible.
