A disquieting, atmospheric debut horror novel about a young woman investigating her mother’s disappearance at an abandoned Nevada observatory, for fans of Jeff VanderMeer and Mariana Enriquez–
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.
“Nicholas Russell’s fiction—coiled, restrained, beautiful, and haunting—evokes the new Wild West and its lonely inhabitants, all of them searching. The result is deeply unsettling, urgent, dark, and wry.” - Danzy Senna, author of New People and Colored Television
“H. P. Lovecraft understands the weirdness of New England, Jeff Vandermeer understands the weirdness of Florida, Reggie Oliver understands the weirdness of the stage. But nobody understands the parched and spiny weirdness of Nevada like Nicholas Russell does. A vivid embodiment of place and a merciless excavation of the complexities of family, Observer is an impressive debut.” - Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World and Last Days
