Nicholas Russell with Adam Vitcavage Live at Tattered Cover Aspen Grove

We are excited to welcome Nicholas Russell on Wednesday, October 14th at 5:30 PM at our Aspen Grove location to celebrate his disquieting, atmospheric debut horror novel, Observer!

Registration includes the following options:

• A signed Hardcover copy of the book … OR

• A $5 Gift Card to Tattered Cover Book Store

We will have a limited supply of additional books for guests to purchase in store. Only a book ticket guarantees you a copy of the book.

This event includes an opportunity to meet the author, participate in an audience Q&A after the book talk, and get your book(s) signed and personalized. Photos with the author are welcome!

If you are unable to attend the event after purchasing a ticket, you are required to pick up your copy of the book (with proof of purchase from your event registration) within 7 days after the event date. If the book is not picked up by that date, you relinquish your copy to Tattered Cover Book Store.

ABOUT THE BOOK

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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nicholas Russell is a writer from Las Vegas. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Conjunctions, The Baffler, No Tokens, Defector, and Hunger Mountain. Observer is his first novel.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Adam Vitcavage is the founder of Debutiful. His work has appeared in Electric Literature, Paste Magazine, The Millions, and the anthology Living, Together: Reimagining Community in the Age of Disconnection. Electric Literature has called him “the champion of debut authors” for his work covering debut books, and the Debutiful podcast was named a Best Book Podcast by Electric Literature, Book Riot, Town and Country, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Mary Sue, and SheReads. He lives in Denver with his wife.