Best-selling author John Darnielle joins G’Ra Asim and Left Bank Books IN PERSON to discuss new book Devil House
Left Bank Books Features New York Times Bestselling Author and Mountain Goats Singer-Songwriter
John Darnielle: in person and online
Devil’s House
Tuesday, February 8 at 7 p.m. Central
In person at the Ethical Society of St. Louis, 9001 Clayton Road, St. Louis, MO 63117 and live stream online. Darnielle will be in conversation with author and musician G’Ra Asim.
Tickets include an autographed copy of John Darnielle’s Devil House! The books will be pre-signed. Due to COVID, there will be no meeting after the event. Signed copies of the book will be available after the February 9 event for pick up or mailing. In-person ticket holders will receive their book at the event. If you cannot attend the event in person or virtually, you can still purchase a signed copy of the book which will be available for pick up or mailing after the event.
**Proof of vaccination and a mask will be required for entry to the in-person event. **Guests will need to bring photo ID AND either their physical vaccination card or a photo of their vaccination card. Your ticket is a call-in ticket and check-in will be by photo ID at the event.
From New York Times bestselling author and Mountain Goats singer-songwriter John Darnielle comes an epic and gripping novel about murder, truth, and the dangers of storytelling.
Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That’s what his mother always told him. Years later, he’s a bona fide detective writer, with a macabre success – and a film adaptation – to his name, as well as a string of less notable later efforts. But now he’s being offered the chance to take the big break: move into the house where two briefly notorious murders took place, apparently the work of disgruntled teenagers during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. California, a small town whose name means something to him – his closest childhood friend lived there, once upon a time. He begins his research diligently and enthusiastically, but soon the story leads him into an enigma he never expected – back to his own work and what it means, back to the very heart of what he does and who he is.
Devil House is John Darnielle’s most ambitious work to date, a book that blurs the line between fact and fiction, combining bold formal experimentation with a haunting story of crime, writing, memory and obsession. artistic.
“Darnielle has an affection for the dark side of pop culture and how fans of supposedly dark and doomsday genres like heavy metal and horror are more sophisticated than people realize. So this clever novel and meandering about true crime books and 1980s “Satanic Panic” suits it perfectly and its best yet… An impressive meta-work that delivers the pleasures of true crime while skewering it. Kirkus review, starred review
“This suspenseful masterpiece is as careful with its sharp grips as it is with the bread crumbs it slowly drops on its way to its stunning ending. It works flawlessly on many levels, making it a worthwhile read. must-have for true crime junkies and experimental fiction fans.”– Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
John Darnielle’s debut novel, Wolf in White Van, was a New York Times bestseller, National Book Award nominee and Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist for first fiction, and widely hailed as one of the best novels of the year. He is the writer, composer, guitarist and lead singer of The Mountain Goats. He lives in Durham, North Carolina with his wife and sons.
G’Ra Asim, writer and musician, is an assistant professor of non-fiction writing at Ithaca College. He served as managing editor at the African-American Political Forum and a graduate fellow at Columbia’s undergraduate writing program. Her work has appeared in Slate, Salon, Guernica, The Baffler and The New Republic. When he’s not writing prose or teaching, he sings, plays bass and writes lyrics for New York punk pop band babygotbacktalk, which has been named one of the “Top 8 Punkest Bands on the Planet Right Now” by AfroPunk.
