An Evening with Jason Diamond and Alejandro Nodarse

Family history, gangster-era Chicago and a striking literary debut shape an evening program at Books & Books in Coral Gables.

An Evening with Jason Diamond and Alejandro Nodarse takes place Thursday, September 18, presented in partnership with The Betsy Hotel. Diamond will present his novel Kaplan’s Plot, which follows Elijah Mendes as he returns to Chicago to care for his ailing mother and stumbles onto a family mystery: his great-uncle’s grave in a Jewish cemetery and a hidden past linking his grandfather to the city’s criminal underworld of the 1920s. As Elijah investigates, long-buried secrets force him and his mother to confront difficult truths about identity, legacy and acceptance.

Diamond is the author of the memoir Searching for John Hughes, the cultural study The Sprawl, and co-author of New York Nico’s Guide to NYC. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ and The Paris Review. Born in Skokie, Illinois, and now based in Brooklyn, he publishes the newsletter The Melt and has established himself as a cultural critic with a sharp eye for place and memory.

In conversation with Diamond is Alejandro Nodarse, Miami-born author of Cuban descent. Nodarse’s debut novel earned recognition as a finalist for the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel and was long-listed for the 2026 Clark Fiction Prize. Beyond his writing, he is an avid outdoorsman, often hiking, biking and camping in the Everglades—an environment that informs his perspective as a storyteller rooted in South Florida.

Admission is free with RSVP, and copies of Kaplan’s Plot will be available for purchase at the event.