Elizabeth Brundage

Arriving home to find his wife murdered and their toddler left alone, art history professor George Clare is targeted with suspicion by a relentless police officer as dark community secrets are revealed over a span of decades.

All Things Cease to Appear

At Rye Adler's funeral, they didn't bury his body -- or his rivalry: A gripping literary thriller by the author of the "wrenching and exhilarating" All Things Cease to Appear (Wall Street Journal) Success hasn't come easily to photographer, Julian Ladd, even though, twenty years ago, he attended the exclusive Brodsky Workshop, from where his roommate, Rye Adler, soared straight to the top. But success isn't always what it seems, and underneath all the adulation Adler feels like a sell-out. When an ex-lover appears out of the blue, asking for help only Adler can give, he embarks on an emotional odyssey to right the wrongs of his past, one that forces him to abandon his role as an objective observer of the rich and famous, and enter a broken landscape in search of the very thing he's lost: himself.

A Novel

The Vanishing Point

The seemingly idyllic family life of Michael, a rising doctor who also works at an abortion clinic, and Annie, a teacher who is finding the role of doctor's wife stale, is threatened by a mysterious perpetrator who is either opposed to Michael's work or harboring violent feelings toward Annie. A first novel. Reprint.

The Doctor's Wife

Late one winter afternoon in the small town of Chosen, New York, professor George Clare knocks on his neighbor's door with terrible news: he returned from work to find his wife, Catherine, murdered in their bed. Someone took an ax to her head while their three-year-old daughter, Franny, played alone in her room across the hall. Recent transplants to Chosen, the Clares have not received the warmest welcome; once a thriving dairy farm, their home is haunted by the tragedy that left the former owner's three sons orphaned and adrift. As one dark secret peels away to reveal others--and as the Clare marriage reveals itself to have a sinister darkness that rivals the farm's history--Elizabeth Brundage offers a rich and complex portrait of the scars that can haunt a community for generations and the dark longings inside each and every one of us that drive us to do inexplicable things.

Having grown up in a privileged environment, private school student Willa witnesses the tragic collision between the private difficulties of her biological and adoptive families, a situation that is further challenged by the indiscretions of her headmaster and a feminist sculptor's reckless affair. 60,000 first printing.

Somebody Else's Daughter

La apariencia de las cosas

Fin février 1979, Chosen, petite ville étriquée et appauvrie, en passe d'être repeuplée par de riches New-Yorkais. George Clare rentre chez lui et trouve sa femme assassinée. Leur fille de trois ans, seule dans sa chambre, est saine et sauve. Pour le shérif Travis Lawton, George est le premier suspect. Huit mois plus tôt, le couple avait acheté la ferme des Hale pour une bouchée de pain, George omettant de dire à sa femme que les anciens propriétaires, acculés par les dettes, s'y étaient suicidés, laissant trois orphelins, Eddy, Wade et Cole. Dans les angles morts est aussi l'histoire des frères Hale, et celle de la maison de leur enfance. Une fresque d'une étonnante profondeur. Un grand roman américain. Cécile Mury, Télérama. Conteuse puissante, Elizabeth Brundage se montre aussi douée pour le suspense que pour la psychologie. Alexandre Fillon, Le Figaro littéraire. Un roman prodigieusement captivant. Sabine Audrerie, La Croix. Traduit de l'anglais (Etats-Unis) par Cécile Arnaud.

Dans les angles morts

«Fantasmi, omicidi, un terrificante psicotico all’apparenza normale e una scrittura straordinaria. Mi è piaciuto tantissimo». Stephen King «Un matrimonio, un sociopatico, una famiglia distrutta, le cose che facciamo per amore... Tutti i personaggi sono empatici e sospetti in egual misura, e la Brundage è bravissima nel togliere uno a uno gli strati dell’emozione che definisce ogni rapporto». «The New York Times Book Review» Un tardo pomeriggio d’inverno nello stato di New York, George Clare torna a casa e trova la moglie assassinata e la figlia di tre anni sola – da quante ore? – in camera sua. Da poco ha accettato un posto di insegnante di Storia dell’arte in un college locale, e si è trasferito con la famiglia in una fattoria che le voci di paese vogliono «stregata»: pochi anni prima, è stata al centro di un altro fatto di sangue, la morte di una coppia di agricoltori, che ha lasciato tre figli adolescenti. George diventa subito il sospettato numero uno, e mentre i suoi genitori tentano di salvarlo dalle accuse, e lo sceriffo cerca prove di colpevolezza, la cittadina opta per un intervento soprannaturale, che sembra confermato da strane apparizioni di oggetti e improvvise, gelide folate di vento. I tre ragazzi orfani si ritrovano presto invischiati nel mistero, visto che l’omicidio è avvenuto in quella che era la loro vecchia casa d’infanzia. In questo appassionante noir ricco di riferimenti artistici e filosofici, seguiamo la storia di due famiglie, l’intreccio delle loro vite, il ritratto complesso di un matrimonio, e uno studio delle ferite che segnano un’intera comunità. Con una scrittura semplice e suggestiva, Elizabeth Brundage ci regala un thriller straordinario, un romanzo dai tocchi gotici potente e bellissimo, capace di incantare il lettore fino all’ultima pagina. Da questo romanzo è stato tratto l’omonimo film Netflix (2021) con Amanda Seyfried, candidata al Golden Globe e all’Oscar per Mank, e F. Murray Abraham, premio Oscar per l’interpretazione di Salieri in Amadeus. «Elizabeth Brundage riesce nel sapiente dosaggio dei colpi di scena che scandiscono un ritmo avvincente». Silvana Mazzocchi, «La Repubblica» «L’apparenza delle cose si trasforma in uno stupendo noir letterario, colmo di suggestioni e delicatezza». Piero Soria, «La Stampa» «Elizabeth Brundage tratteggia un paesaggio umano di rarissima precisione, in cui la vita è una trappola o una farsa, in bilico tra il paradiso e l’inferno». Fabrizio d’Esposito, «Il Fatto Quotidiano»

L'apparenza delle cose

'Ghosts, murder, a terrifying psychotic who seems normal, and beautiful writing. Loved it' Stephen King 'Can make you gasp in astonishment or break your heart with a single line' Wall St Journal 'Superb. Think a more literary, and feminist, Gone Girl' Vogue BASIS FOR THE NETFLIX FILM THINGS HEARD & SEEN This begins the morning Catherine Clare died. The day her daughter spent in the house with her. The evening her husband came home to find her. This becomes the tale of their marriage, and the ones around them. A tale of bonds between families, between lives living and lost and of the lonely ones that share no bonds at all. Who should be pitied. Who must be feared.

now a major Netflix new release Things Heard and Seen

At Rye Adler's funeral, they didn't bury his body - or the rivalry of his closest enemy. A gripping literary thriller by the author of the "wrenching and exhilarating" All Things Cease to Appear (Wall Street Journal). Julian Ladd and Rye Adler cross paths as photography students in the exclusive Brodsky Workshop. When Rye needs a roommate, Julian moves in, and a quiet, compulsive envy takes root, assuring, at least in his own mind, that he will never achieve Rye's certain success. Both men are fascinated with their beautiful and talented classmate, Magda, whose captivating images of her Polish neighborhood set her apart, and each will come to know her intimately - a woman neither can possess and only one can love. Twenty years later, long after their paths diverge, Rye is at the top of his field, famous for his photographs of celebrities and far removed from the downtrodden and disenfranchised subjects who'd secured his reputation as the eye of his generation. When Magda reenters his life, asking for help only he can give, Rye finds himself in a broken landscape of street people and addicts, forcing him to reckon with the artist he once was, until his search for a missing boy becomes his own desperate fight to survive. Months later, when Julian discovers Rye's obituary, the paper makes it sound like a suicide. Despite himself, Julian attends the funeral, where there is no casket and no body. This sudden reentry into a world he thought he left behind forces Julian to question not only Rye's death, but the very foundations of his life. In this eerie and evocative novel, Elizabeth Brundage establishes herself as one of the premiere authors of literary fiction at work today.

A taut and terrifying thriller about the lengths to which we'll go to make our dreams come true Hedda Chase is a top-flight executive producer at Gladiator Films, fast-tracked in the business since she graduated from Yale. An aggressive businesswoman, she recently pulled the plug on a film project initiated by one of her predecessors. The screenwriter on the project was Hugh Waters, a wannabe with a dead-end marriage and a day job at an insurance company. This script was his ticket out-until Hedda tampered with his plans, claiming his violence was over the top, his premise not credible, and his ending implausible. Hugh decides to prove otherwise by staging his script's ending and casting Hedda Chase as the victim. He flies to Los Angeles and finds Hedda, kidnaps her, and locks her in the trunk of her vintage BMW in the parking lot at LAX. He leaves the keys in the ignition, the parking ticket on the dash, and lets "destiny" take its course. This is the set-up for a troubling, smart, deadly look at women and images of women, at media as a high-stakes game and the selling of a war as theatre. (One key character is an Iraq veteran, and one of Hedda's projects is a film about women in Iraq). Brundage's Los Angeles is a casual battleground that trades carelessly in lives and dreams. As always, her characters are complicated, surprising, and intense in this high velocity, provocative novel. Watch a Video

Elizabeth Brundage

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