Melanie Finn

"Daring and unputdownable." --Jenny Hollander, Marie Claire The Hare is an affecting portrait of Rosie Monroe, of her resilience and personal transformation under the pin of the male gaze. Raised to be obedient by a stern grandmother in a blue-collar town in Massachusetts, Rosie accepts a scholarship to art school in New York City in the 1980s. One morning at a museum, she meets a worldly man twenty years her senior, with access to the upper crust of New England society. Bennett is dashing, knows that "polo" refers only to ponies, teaches her which direction to spoon soup, and tells of exotic escapades with Truman Capote and Hunter S. Thompson. Soon, Rosie is living with him on a swanky estate on Connecticut's Gold Coast, naively in sway to his moral ambivalence. A daughter -- Miranda -- is born, just as his current con goes awry forcing them to abscond in the middle of the night to the untamed wilderness of northern Vermont. Almost immediately, Bennett abandons them in an uninsulated cabin without a car or cash for weeks at a time, so he can tend a teaching job that may or may not exist at an elite college. Rosie is forced to care for her young daughter alone, and to tackle the stubborn intricacies of the wood stove, snowshoe into town, hunt for wild game, and forage in the forest. As Rosie and Miranda's life gradually begins to normalize, Bennett's schemes turn malevolent, and Rosie must at last confront his twisted deceptions. Her actions have far-reaching and perilous consequences. An astounding new literary thriller from a celebrated author at the height of her storytelling prowess, The Hare bravely considers a woman's inherent sense of obligation - sexual and emotional - to the male hierarchy, and deserves to be part of our conversation as we reckon with #MeToo and the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Rosie Monroe emerges as an authentic, tarnished feminist heroine. "With The Hare, Melanie Finn has written a powerful story of female perseverance, strength, and resilience. This book has rare qualities: beautiful writing while being absolutely unputdownable, and I will be pressing it into the hands of every reader I know." --Claire Fuller, author of Bitter Orange, Our Endless Numbered Days, and Swimming Lessons

The Hare

"Published in a slightly different form as Shame, in 2015 in Great Britain by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group, an Hachette UK Company"--Title page verso.

A Novel

The Gloaming

Underneath

Returning to Kenya following her father's death, for the first time in more than twenty years, Ellie finally gets the chance to confront her troubled relationship with an abusive and violent father and to finally put to rest the dark memories of the past that have haunted her life. A first novel. Reader's Guide available. Original.

Away from You

'Arresting - Finn conjures up Africa perfectly' Margaret Forster 'A brilliantly written account of a soul in torment and the way she is pursued by her own fate. Finn evokes the darkness and light of Africa with the same sureness that she calls forth the brightness and shadow of the human heart' Tim Lott 'Haunting and atmospheric I was completely hooked' Leila Aboulela REDEMPTION IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY - or so Pilgrim Jones hopes as she looks up at a departures board and takes the first flight. She is running away; from her failed marriage and from the carnage she has caused in a small Swiss village. Pilgrim alights on the edge of Africa. Over confessions and strong gin, she is lured into a world of mercenaries and philanthropists, delusional heroes and witchdoctors in polyester suits. Here, in a land where fireflies light the sky, anything even redemption seems possible. But can she come to terms with her past before the past catches up with her?

Shame

With the assurance and grace of her acclaimed novelThe Gloaming--which earned her comparisons to Patricia Highsmith--Melanie Finn returns with a precisely layered and tense new literary thriller. The Underneath follows Kay Ward, a former journalist struggling with the constraints of motherhood. Along with her husband and two children, she rents a quaint Vermont farmhouse for the summer. The idea is to disconnect from their work-based lifestyle--that had her doggedly pursuing a genocidal leader of child soldiers known as General Christmas, even through Kay's pregnancy and the birth of their second child--in an effort to repair their shaky marriage. It isn't long before Kay's husband is called away and she discovers a mysterious crawlspace in the rental with unsettling writing etched into the wall. Alongside some of the house's other curiosities and local sleuthing, Kay is led to believe that something terrible may have happened to the home's owners. Kay's investigation leads her to a local logger, Ben Comeau, a man beset with his own complicated and violent past. A product of the foster system and life-long resident of the Northeast Kingdom, Ben struggles to overcome his situation, and to help an abused child whose addict mother is too incapacitated to care about the boy's plight. The Underneath is an intelligent and considerate exploration of violence--both personal and social--and whether violence may ever be justified.

The Underneath

A reckless woman, a story of violence, the possibility of redemption... Ex-journalist Kay and her family are spending the summer in a rented farmhouse in Vermont. Kay is haunted by her traumatic past in Africa, and is struggling with her troubled marriage and the constraints of motherhood. Then her husband is called away unexpectedly on business and Kay finds herself alone with the children, obsessed by the idea that something terrible has happened to the owners of the house. The locals are reticent when she asks about their whereabouts; and she finds disturbing writing scrawled across one of the walls. As she starts to investigate she becomes involved with a local man, Ben, whose life is complicated by his own violent past, his involvement in a drug-trafficking operation, and his desire to adopt an abused child. Their two stories collide and intertwine, heading towards a dramatic denouement. The Underneath is a tense, intelligent, beautifully written thriller which is also a considered exploration of violence, both personal and national, and whether it can ever be justified.

A Tatler Sizzling Summer Read Spectator Best Books of 2015 Shortlisted for the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize 'Intense, impressive... Told with force and bracing directness... It's a book that smashes into you' Guardian 'Both disturbing and ultimately uplifting . . . the images she conjures up are so subversively creepy they haunt you for days' Spectator 'Deserves major attention' New York Times Pilgrim Jones doesn't belong here. She belongs in the cities of Europe, by her handsome husband's side. But here she is, in a village on the edge of Africa. No one knows why she is here and what she is hiding from. And she is not going to tell them - about her husband's betrayal, or the children she killed in a crash. But two men from Pilgrim's past are coming to find her - two men with very different motives.

Melanie Finn

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