Today’s GalleyCrush is Ottessa Moshfegh’s Death in Her Hands, forthcoming from Penguin Press on April 21, 2020. Editor’s Note: This book’s publication date has been postponed to June 23, 2020.
Perfect pitch: “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.”
First lines: “Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body.”
Big blurb: “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
Book notes: Hardcover, fiction, 272 pages.
Author bio: Ottessa Moshfegh is the author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, a New York Times best-seller; Homesick for Another World, a New York Times Book Review notable book of the year; Eileen, which was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction; and McGlue, which won the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and the Believer Book Award. Her stories have earned her a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award, the Plimpton Prize, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
