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“Strange, original, and utterly brilliant — Laird Hunt is one of the most talented young writers on the American scene today.”—Paul Auster

Henry, a New Yorker left destitute by circumstance and obsession, is plucked from vagrancy by a shadowy outfit whose primary business is arranging for staged murders of anxiety-ridden clients unhinged by the “events downtown” and seeking to — experience — and live through — their own carefully executed assassinations. When Henry joins this nefarious crew, which includes a beautiful blonde tattooist named Tulip, contortionist twins, and a woman referred to only as “the knockout,” he becomes inextricably linked to its ringleader, the mysterious herring connoisseur Mr. Kindt, whose identity can be traced through twists and turns all the way back to the corpse depicted in Rembrandt’s

Mirrored by a concurrently running story set in a hospital where Henry and Mr. Kindt are patients attended to by a certain Dr. Tulp, the mysteries surrounding Mr. Kindt’s past, Henry’s fate, and murders both staged and real begin to unravel in the most extraordinary ways. Substantive, stylish, and darkly comic, is a skillful dissection of reality, human connection, and the very nature of existence.

Set in a dream-like European city reminiscent of Barcelona, along a boulevard teeming with artists who perform as living statues, comes the beautiful and frightening story of a man running from his past, a woman consumed by grief, and the forces that pursue them both.

New to the city, Harry is drawn to the boulevard, and particularly to Solange, a silent, silver angel awash in Lucite tears and heartbreak. Haunted by his own mysterious tragedy but determined to woo her, Harry visits Almundo’s Store for Living Statues and begins his transformation into the golden “Knight of the Woeful Countenance.”

A love story related in the dark, stylish noir of continental cinema and overlaid with a patina of surrealism, this is a novel where friends are also informers, street theater is the lifeblood of culture, and refuge can be found in the belly of a yellow, papier mâché submarine.

As the lovers reckon with seers offering answers to insoluble questions, neighbors who take evening strolls with the dearly departed, critics who control more than artistic fate, and shoes determined to lead their wearers astray, they come to understand the price of survival and what it means to travel along the ray of the star.

Called “one of the most talented young writers on the American scene today” by Paul Auster, is the author of three previous, genre-bending novels: , and . A former press officer at the United Nations and current faculty member at the University of Denver, he lives in Boulder, Colorado.

"There is always a surprise in the voice and in the heart of Laird Hunt's stories, with its echoes of habit caught in a timeless dialect, so we see the world he gives us as if new. 'You hear something like that and it walks out the door with you.'" — Michael Ondaatje

"Laird Hunt's , about two slave girls who take their white mistress into captivity, is a profound meditation on the sexual and racial subconscious of America. . [A] gorgeous and terrifying novel." — Danzy Senna

As a teenage girl, Ginny marries Linus Lancaster, her mother's second cousin, and moves to his Kentucky pig farm "ninety miles from nowhere." In the shadows of the lush Kentucky landscape, Ginny discovers the empty promises of Linus' "paradise" — a place where the charms of her husband fall away to reveal a troubled man and cruel slave owner. Ginny befriends the young slaves Cleome and Zinnia who work at the farm — until Linus' attentions turn to them, and she finds herself torn between her husband and only companions. The events that follow Linus' death change all three women for life. Haunting, chilling, and suspenseful, is a powerful tale of redemption and human endurance in antebellum America.

Laird Hunt

Edward Hopper's painting "Office at Night" is open to endless interpretation. In this collaborative novella, Kate Bernheimer and Laird Hunt borrow from his practice of improvising on "the facts" of observation to create a work of art, imagining the lives of its characters: stenographer Marge Quinn and her boss, the sometimes painter Abraham Chelikowsky.

"The first time we met, it was about a stapler, I think."

Deadpan delivery and a sly eye for detail characterize the anonymous secret agent in Laird Hunt's tense, funny spy noir. When the nameless narrator botches an assignment for the clandestine organization that employs him, everyone in his life — including his new girlfriend — is revealed to be either true-blue, double operative, or both.

With the literary coyness of Paul Auster and the dark absurdity of Kafka, Hunt's debut is a daring, memory-driven narrative that is as fittingly spare as a bare ceiling light — and just as pendulous. On the surface, the narrator is a simple man, fixing his washer and dryer, strolling through city parks, falling in love at an office supply store. But in the mundane gives way to outrageous misconduct, and with each unexpected visitor or cryptic note, the tension reaches tantalizing heights. As the narrator frugally doles out clues about his dangerous work in an unnamed European city, the reader inevitably becomes confidante and fellow gumshoe. The narrator's final assignment — to identify his own assassin — dismantles the reader's own analysis of the evidence.