Pittsburgh Launch! Nicholas Russell "Observer" (w/ Lauren Bajek)

We are thrilled to host debut writer (and bookseller!) Nicholas Russell at The Whale to celebrate the publication of Observe! We are thrilled to host debut horror writer (and bookseller!) Nicholas Russell at The Whale to celebrate Observer, a desert horror novel set in the wilderness of Russell's home state of Nevada. Brian Evenson, Shirley Jackson Award–winning author of Song for the Unraveling of the World and Last Days praised Observer, "...nobody understands the parched and spiny weirdness of Nevada like Nicholas Russell does. A vivid embodiment of place and a merciless excavation of the complexities of family, Observer is an impressive debut." Nicholas will be joined in conversation by local writer and literary agent, Lauren Bajek. A disquieting, atmospheric debut horror novel about a young woman investigating her mother’s disappearance at an abandoned Nevada observatory, for fans of Jeff VanderMeer and Mariana Enriquez On a scorched summer day, Renata Scarborough comes home to find the contents of her estranged mother Corinne’s life on her doorstep. Her aunt and cousin seem eager to conclude that the troublesome Corinne is dead. Renata isn’t convinced and begins poring over her mother’s journals for answers. Among descriptions of Corinne’s work at the McNairy Observatory, Renata unearths a hidden obsession with an early twentieth-century surveyor whose encounters with a mysterious entity bear a startling resemblance to her mother’s reports. Compelled beyond reason, Renata journeys to that now-abandoned outpost in the Nevada wilderness to search for the truth. But in McNairy, a thorny, decades-long clash between science and the desert only complicates Renata’s questions. The town’s scarred and suspicious residents refuse to discuss the observatory’s closure, leaving Renata to wonder if Corinne’s version of events reflects reality. As she ascends the peak that looms over McNairy, Renata witnesses unnerving phenomena she can’t explain and feels a creeping dread that what is waiting for her isn’t her mother at all. Haunting, darkly comic, and captivating, Observer reveals the pure cosmic terror of the desert, a place of wonder and menace, asking what happens when we look out at nature and find something inhuman looking back. LAUREN BAJEK is a literary agent and former writer living in Pittsburgh. Her fiction has been published in magazines such as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and Postmodern Culture, and her clients have been nominated for the Stoker, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Hugo awards. NICHOLAS RUSSELL is a writer and bookseller from Las Vegas. His work has been featured in McSweeney's, The Baffler, Conjunctions, and Defector, where he is a contributing writer. Observer is his first novel. Sign up for the livestream!