Join us for an electrifying author event with Sarah Braunstein featuring her new novel, "Bad Animals." From the depths of Maine's quiet landscapes to the complexities of human nature, "Bad Animals" promises an unforgettable journey that will linger in your mind long after you turn the last page.
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Bad Animals
A sexy, propulsive novel that confronts the limits of empathy and the perils of appropriation through the eyes of a disgraced small-town librarian.
Now that her brilliant botanist daughter is off at college, buttoned-up Maeve Cosgrove loves her job at a quiet Maine public library more than anything. But when a teenager accuses Maeve—Maeve!—of spying on her romantic escapades in the mezzanine bathroom, she winds up laid off and humiliated. Stuck at home in a tailspin, Maeve cares for the mysterious plants in her daughter’s greenhouse while obsessing over the clearly troubled girl at the source of the rumor. She hopes to have a powerful ally in her attempts to clear her name: her favorite author, Harrison Riddles, who has finally responded to her adoring letters and accepted an invitation to speak at the library.
Riddles, meanwhile, arrives in town with his own agenda. He announces a plan to write a novel about another young library patron, Sudanese refugee Willie, and enlists Maeve’s help in convincing him to participate. Maeve wants to look out for Willie, but Riddles’s charisma and the sheen of literary glory he promises are difficult to resist. A scheme to get her job back draws Maeve further into Riddles’s universe—where shocking questions about sex, morality, and the purpose of literature threaten to upend her orderly life.
A writer of “savage compassion” (Salvatore Scibona, author of The Volunteer), Sarah Braunstein constructs a shrewd, page-turning caper that explores one woman’s search for agency and ultimate reckoning with the kind of animal she is.
Sarah Braunstein is the author of The Sweet Relief of Missing Children. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker and the Harvard Review. The recipient of a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 prize, she lives in Portland, Maine, and teaches at Colby College.
Amity Gaige is the author of four novels, O My Darling, The Folded World, Schroder, and Sea Wife. Sea Wife was a 2020 New York Times Notable Book and an Elle Best Book of 2020. Her previous novel, Schroder, was named one of Best Books of 2013 by The New York Times Book Review, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, among others, and was shortlisted for UK’s Rathbones Folio Prize in 2014. Sea Wife and Schroder have been translated into a combined 18 languages. Amity is the winner of a Fulbright Fellowship, fellowships at the MacDowell and Yaddo colonies, and a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction. Her short stories, essays, and book reviews have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Die Welt, Harper’s Bazaar, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. She lives in West Hartford, CT, with her family, and teaches creative writing at Yale.