Available Dark

Elizabeth Hand is the author of twenty multiple-award-winning novels and five collections of short fiction. Her most recent book, A Haunting on the Hill, was named one of 2023's best novels by the Washington Post, The New Yorker, and Harper's Bazaar. She's been a longtime contributor of book reviews to the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and the Boston Review, among many others. Her acclaimed novels featuring Cass Neary, "one of noir's great antiheroes" [Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love] have been translated into multiple languages, and are being developed for a major television series. She divides her time between the last of Maine and North London.

"Available Dark works well as a thriller, but it's Cass who makes the book extraordinary. It's rare to find a strong female character - especially a middle-aged one - who likes sex and drinking and drugs and doesn't feel the need to apologize about it. Eight pages into the book she's offered some crystal meth. She takes it. Why the hell not? Neither she nor the narrator blinks. There's nothing coy or exhibitionistic about it, it's just who she is." - Time Magazine"In this brilliant sequel to Hand's acclaimed literary thriller, Generation Loss (2007), Cassandra Neary, "a burned out, aging punk with a dead gaze," who subsists largely on alcohol and speed, confronts darkness nearly beyond her comprehension. . . . A flash of incandescence counters final threats of death, and the all-encompassing darkness is leavened by a glimmer of hope. Stunning." - Booklist (starred review)"Norwegian collector Anton Bredahl, an admirer . . . offers Neary a tidy sum to fly to Helsinki to give her opinion on some photos he's thinking of purchasing. She finds herself blown away by the photographer's technique, notwithstanding the grim subject matter-corpses. The bloody aftermath of the assignment places Neary in grave danger as she confronts a significant figure from her past. The scenes of violence advance the plot while helping the reader to understand Hand's uncompromisingly compromised main character." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)