From Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company
Lauren Beukes’s writing, and her unique ability to brilliantly transcend genre in unexpected ways, has won her international critical and fan praise, and a multitude of impressive awards and distinctions. Her unparalleled imagination and ability to craft a truly original story have never been more present than in her extraordinary new novel, “The Shining Girls” (Mulholland Books; June 4, 2013).
According to Brooklyn Eagle, Beuke will be coming to Brooklyn’s BookCourt on June 13 to celebrate the release of her book, which – described as “The Time Traveler’s Wife” meets “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” – is the riveting, creepy, and somehow all-too-believable story about a time-traveling serial killer being chased through decades past and present by his only surviving victim.
In Depression-era Chicago, Harper Curtis finds a key to a house that opens onto other times. But it comes at a cost. Harper has to kill the shining girls: bright young women burning with potential. He stalks them through their lives across different eras until, in 1989, one of his victims, Kirby Mazrachi, survives and starts hunting him back. Working with an ex–homicide reporter who is falling for her, Kirby has to unravel an impossible mystery. “The Shining Girls” is a masterful twist on the classic serial killer tale: a violent quantum leap featuring a memorable and appealing girl in pursuit of a deadly criminal.
Despite the time-traveling conceit, much of the novel is historically accurate. Beukes meticulously researched everything from the inner workings of the Chicago Sun-Times, where Kirby works, to radium dancing girls of the 1930s, the profession of one of Harper’s victims. She dug information from out-of-print books, videos, photographs, and personal histories and supplemented her research with personalized tours of Chicago and interviews with the city’s employees, resulting in a vividly rendered genre-bending novel of wild imagination. Beukes’s previous work has been categorized as hardboiled thriller, cyberpunk, and supernatural and has won her fans in cult favorites like William Gibson and Neil Gaiman, but “The Shining Girls” represents a major work of crossover fiction that is sure to excite fiction fans everywhere.
Beukes will celebrate the launch of her novel in Brooklyn on June 13 at BookCourt. BookCourt is located at 163 Court St. in Cobble Hill.
Lauren Beukes is the author of the acclaimed novels “Moxyland” and “Zoo City.” She is a recipient of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, finished runner-up to Lev Grossman for the John W Campbell Award, was shortlisted for a plethora of other awards, and received rave reviews from around the world, including the New York Times and The Guardian. She lives in Cape Town, South Africa, with her husband and daughter.
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