The Guest: A Novel

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • What does it take for an outsider to get in, for a young woman on the edge to survive, to belong?

“[A] smoldering thriller that explores desire and deception.”—The Washington Post

“Every sentence as sharp as a scalpel, a woman toeing the line between welcome and unwelcome guest becomes a fully destabilizing force.”— The New York Times

In this "eerily captivating" (Elle) novel, a young woman with few resources but gifted with a dangerous ability to navigate the desires of others, seeks to make a place for herself in a closed, rarefied world.

Summer is coming to an end on the East End of Long Island, and a misstep at a dinner party leads Alex to be dismissed by the older man she's been staying with. Guided by a mutable sense of morality, she stays on Long Island, moving like a ghost through the beautiful hedged lanes, gated driveways, and sun-blasted dunes, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.

Taut, propulsive, and impossible to look away from, Emma Cline’s The Guest is a brilliant literary achievement.

Story Locale:Long Island, NY

About the Author

Emma Cline is the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls and the story collection Daddy. The Girls was a finalist for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and was the winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. Cline's stories have been published in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review and The Best American Short Stories anthologies. She received an O’Henry Award and the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review, and was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists.

Author Residence: Sonoma, CA

Author Hometown: Sonoma, CA