The Night Guest - Hardcover

The Big Fall Books Preview 2013 (also an Amazon Best Book of the Month, October 2013): At age 75, Ruth is a widower, who lives alone in a remote beach home in Australia until one day a mysterious caretaker named Frida shows up to help around the house. But can Frida be trusted? Ruth's mind isn't what it once was, but she suspects her new friend isn't all that she seems. The Night Guest is an impressive debut--a tender novel about old age and a psychological meditation on isolation--that moves with the curious pace of a mystery. Fiona McFarlane is a new voice that reads as if she has the experience of a familiar voice, like she's been with us all along. --Kevin Nguyen

Fiona McFarlane was born in Sydney, has a BA from Sydney University and a PhD from Cambridge University, and holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a Michener Fellow and won the university's prestigious Keene Prize for Literature in 2012. Her work has been published in the New Yorker, Zoetrope: All-Story, Southerly, The Missouri Review, and Best Australian Stories, and she has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Phillips Exeter Academy, and the Australia Council for the Arts. Her debut novel, The Night Guest, was published by Sceptre in 2014.