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.…
"After that, Ottessa Moshfegh – one of the most outstanding young literary talents working today – will publish her latest novel Death in her Hands, which follows the darkly provocative tale of opting-out, My Year of Rest and Relaxation , and her Booker-shortlisted Eileen . This new novel is a detective story of a sort, centring upon an elderly widow living alone in the woods who finds a note on the forest floor apparently reporting a murder – but no body. As with Eileen, it is a book that plays with elements of crime fiction, but don’t expect a paint-by-numbers thriller that ties off neatly by the end. Dark and character-driven. Shortly to be released in the US, but already out (and well-received) in the UK are Ben Okri’s The Freedom Artist and Five Books alumnus Emma Jane Unsworth ‘s Grown Ups which is currently a Sunday Times bestseller in Britain. Also out now in the UK – and available on pre-order in the US – is the latest offering, from the author of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing (which won – amongst other things – the Bailey’s Prize, Goldsmiths Prize and the Desmond Elliot Prize). Strange Hotel is a slim, stream-of-consciousness novella that portrays the internal monologue of an unnamed woman in a series of anonymous hotel rooms, as she considers identity, trauma and romantic disappointment – and the intellectual defence mechanisms she has developed to survive."
