CANCELED: Ottessa Moshfegh and Stephen Sparks

Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - 7:30pm

 

Death in Her Hands: A Novel Cover Image

This event has been canceled.

Praise for Death in Her Hands

“When it comes to evoking the jagged edge of contemporary anxiety there might not be a more insightful writer working today than Moshfegh. That is, if the boundless dark potential of the human psyche is your thing. If it’s not, this atmospheric, darkly comic tale of a pathologically lonely widow and the thrills lurking in her sylvan retreat might not be for you. But, sophisticated reader that you are, you’re not afraid of the dark. Right?” —The Millions

“Perhaps the most jarring genre of fiction is the kind that takes you deep into the gradual unraveling of a person’s mind. Moshfegh does a masterful job with Death In Her Hands, which follows a protagonist who believes she’s solving a murder. The book moves seamlessly from suspenseful to horrifying, retaining the reader’s attention all the while.” —Marie Claire
 
“Ottessa Moshfegh is always a must-read, and her latest combines ‘horror, suspense and pitch-black comedy’ to deliver a fascinating tale guided by an unreliable narrator.” —Paste, 25 Most Anticipated Novels of 2020

About Death in Her Hands

From one of our most ceaselessly provocative literary talents, a novel of haunting metaphysical suspense about an elderly widow whose life is upturned when she finds a cryptic note on a walk in the woods that ultimately makes her question everything about her new home

While on her normal daily walk with her dog in the nearby forest woods, our protagonist comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground with a frame of stones. Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body. Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to this area, having moved here from her longtime home after the death of her husband, and she knows very few people. And she's a little shaky even on her best days. Her brooding about this note quickly grows into a full-blown obsession, and she begins to devote herself to exploring the possibilities of her conjectures about who this woman was and how she met her fate. Her suppositions begin to find echoes in the real world, and with mounting excitement and dread, the fog of mystery starts to form into a concrete and menacing shape. But as we follow her in her investigation, strange dissonances start to accrue, and our faith in her grip on reality weakens, until finally, just as she seems to be facing some of the darkness in her own past with her late husband, we are forced to face the prospect that there is either a more innocent explanation for all this or a much more sinister one--one that strikes closer to home.

A triumphant blend of horror, suspense, and pitch-black comedy, Death in Her Hands asks us to consider how the stories we tell ourselves both guide us closer to the truth and keep us at bay from it. Once again, we are in the hands of a narrator whose unreliability is well earned, only this time the stakes have never been higher.

 

Death in Her Hands: A Novel By Ottessa Moshfegh Cover Image
$27.00
Temporarily Unavailable
ISBN: 9781984879356
Published: Penguin Press - June 23rd, 2020

"[An] intricate and unsettling new novel . . . Death in Her Hands is not a murder mystery, nor is it really a story about self-deception or the perils of escapism. Rather, it's a haunting meditation on the nature and meaning of art."
-Kevin Power, The New Yorker


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My Year of Rest and Relaxation: A Novel By Ottessa Moshfegh Cover Image
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ISBN: 9780525522133
Availability: Click the TITLE to view store availability
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Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Amazon,Vice, BustleThe New York TimesThe GuardianKirkus Reviews, Entertainment Weekly, The AV Club, & Audible

A New York Times Bestseller


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Availability: Click the TITLE to view store availability
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ISBN: 9780399562907
Availability: Click the TITLE to view store availability
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Availability: Click the TITLE to view store availability
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The debut novella from one of contemporary fiction's most exciting young voices, now in a new edition.


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