Jesse Capecelatro

A BODY AT REST
Complete at 90k words

Cornell, 1945. The war is over, and Cornell is back in session. After three years in the secret desert town of Los Alamos, Robert Franklin arrives in Ithaca, hoping to rebuild his life as a physics professor. But when a young woman comes to his office with news of her roommate’s suspicious death—and a sensitive technical document bearing his name—he is drawn into a murder investigation that threatens both his career and the university’s future.

Inspired by real events at Cornell University in the turbulent aftermath of World War II, the novel explores a campus murder during the nascent days of nuclear research.

BIRDIE & THE BOMB
Work in progress

Selected as Notable in the 2026 Gutsy Great Novelist Chapter One Prize and Honorable Mention in the Page One Prize

Barnard College, 1920. Chemistry professor Birdie Moretti is trapped on Wall Street when a bomb explodes, killing dozens and plunging the city into chaos. By the time she returns home, her apartment has been ransacked. In trying to recover what was taken, Birdie unravels a conspiracy tied to the bombing and to a past she believed buried.

Centered around the Wall Street bombing of 1920, the novel explores the emergence of forensic science, the barriers facing women in academia, and the rise of anti-immigrant hysteria in the early twentieth century.