PRE-ORDER: Havoc by Christopher Bollen (HC)

Eighty-one-year-old Maggie Burkhardt has left it all behind and spent the last five years ping-ponging between the world’s luxury hotels.

Now she has finally come to rest somewhere she can imagine staying forever: the Royal Karnak Hotel in Luxor, Egypt.

Maggie is no sweet old lady. She has a nasty, nosy little habit: she spies on her fellow guests and manipulates situations to 'liberate' them from what she sees as unhappy relationships.

When an eight-year-old boy, Otto, and his well-meaning mother arrive at the hotel, Maggie sees two easy targets. But she is more wrong than she could possibly know, and is soon locked in a death-spiral with Otto – has she finally met her match in a child one-tenth her age?

Crackling with the perceptive acid wit of The White Lotus and haloed by Shirley Jackson’s cruel, dark magic, Christopher Bollen’s new novel is a decadent and ghastly delight.

REVIEWS

"A deliciously nasty tale of resentment and revenge … Listening to her describe her strange habits and her wacky opinions of other people is great, wicked fun … Bollen writes with wit and style about an increasingly unhinged battle of wills between two unlikely, and formidable, opponents." ― New York Times

"A masterclass in menace ― this is atmospheric, diabolical fun with two utterly unforgettable antagonists. Not since Agatha Christie has anyone so convincingly put the case for the potential villainy of the very old and very young." - Lucy Foley

"A lot of books claim to be Highsmithian, but this one actually is: A highly readable, twisty, and shrewd satire presenting as a thriller about entitlement, loneliness, jealousy, and the eternal friction between the young and old. Utterly enjoyable. - Hanya Yanagihara 

PRODUCT DETAILS
Hardcover Edition
Publisher: The Borough Press
ISBN: 978-0008730451
Pages: 256