Ladies and Gentlemen

Following his celebrated debut novel, Mr. Peanut, Adam Ross presents a darkly compelling collection of stories about brothers, loners, lovers and young people navigating lives full of good intentions, misunderstandings and obscured motives.

Ross is the kind of writer who gets into his often-dysfunctional characters' heads with ease and inhabits them with compassion, giving them a sense of vulnerability... His prose has a pleasing ease to it, without being easy - there's an edge to the worlds he creates that rewards closer reading and prevents sentimentality or predictability. Definitely one to watch

If you like short stories with a sharp twist in the tale, Adam Ross' astringent collection will be perfectly to your taste

Witty and well-shaped short-story collection... Ross charts the progress of his characters' disillusionment with a compelling mixture of sympathy and ironic detachment

Ross is a gifted writer with a soft spot for the kind of stop - you - in - your - tracks twists that will have readers dropping their cups of tea, slow-mo, into their laps

Vivid depictions of modern anxiety and a lament to humankind's waning attachment to commitment, deftly told by one of the most accomplished new writers working in the US today

Ten years ago the American short story was in decline. Now it is once again a vital genre

Adam Ross was born in New York and studied writing with William Gass and Stanley Elkin. He worked as a journalist and teacher but now writes full-time and lives with his wife and two daughters in Nashville, Tennessee. His first novel, Mr. Peanut, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2010.

A hotshot young lawyer, burdened by years of guilt and resentment, comes to the aid of his irresponsible kid brother, only to realise he's a pawn in a treacherous scheme. A lonely professor, frequently regaled with outrageous tales by the office handyman, suddenly fears he's being asked to abet a murderous fugitive. A man down on his luck closes in on a mysterious job offer while doing a good turn for his fragile neighbour, but his efforts backfire in a terrifically surreal - and hilarious - manner. Four college kids goad each other on in a series of escalating dares, culminating in a result as ambiguous as it is tragic. An enterprising adolescence uses his brief career as a child actor to fulfil the crush he has on a friend's seemingly untouchable older sister. 
 
Laced throughout with glimmers of redemption and a refreshing combination of warmth and cynicism, these noirish narratives have a youthful energy that belies their hard-won wisdom, and together they showcase one of our most outstanding new writers.

Adam Ross

The most riveting look at the dark side of marriage since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?... fascinating. It induced nightmares, at least in this reader. No mean feat

This compulsive thriller works as a sharp satire on loneliness and partnership, and is a beautifully crafted, gripping read

An ambitious and well-crafted noir that manages to humanise its characters while fashioning their stories into a gripping page-turner

A perverse romance... deliciously clever, full of dark insight and even a touch of hope

Mr. Peanut, the daring, arresting first novel by Adam Ross, an author of prodigious talent... the novel is an enormous success - forceful and involving, often deeply stirring and always impressively original... This is a brilliant, powerful, memorable book

The emotional language and perceptions of Mr. Peanut are extraordinary, and all the more so for their position within such a formally stylised novel ... it does entertain, inform and thoroughly delight

Arresting first novel by Adam Ross, an author of prodigious talent'...This is a brilliant, powerful, memorable novel

Ross' debut novel combines thriller and satire as he explores loneliness and marital difficulties in contemporary America

A sharp and satirical thriller...this well-crafted debut novel is gripping from the start

A riveting first novel... its greatest delight is the sheer brilliance of the writing, polished like marble so it moves without friction but wholly vivid and alive

Mr. Peanut is as ingenious as it is riveting

Mr. Peanut crackles with life. Ross's long set pieces... reveal his talent for conjuring characters and imagining scenes that, like good short stories, could stand nobly by themselves

Adam Ross has crafted a diabolically intricate novel, one that presents all the pleasures and challenges of a well-wrought Sudoku puzzle. There's a whiff of alchemy to the book; you can't quite believe that its many pieces fit together so snugly. Yet they do. Once you've finished, you run your eye back and forth and up and down, and every way you look it adds up. Mr. Peanut is smart, funny, 
gripping and - in its ultimate unravelling - sneakily sad

David Pepin has loved his wife since the moment they met, and he can't imagine living without her - yet he obsessively contemplates her demise. Soon she's dead, and he's both deeply distraught and the prime suspect. 
 
The detectives investigating her death have their own conjugal difficulties. Ward Hastroll's wife is inexplicably, voluntarily bedridden. And Sam Sheppard has for decades been especially sensitive to the intricacies of marital guilt, for the most personal of reasons.... 
 
When Pepin is linked to a hitman, the case begins to resemble the Escher drawings that inspire the computer games Pepin designs for a living. Mesmerizing, hugely poignant, astonishing in its reach, Mr. Peanut is a police procedural of the soul and a first novel of the highest order.

Adam Ross

Praise for Mr. Peanut

The most riveting look at the dark side of marriage since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?... fascinating. It induced nightmares, at least in this reader. No mean feat

This compulsive thriller works as a sharp satire on loneliness and partnership, and is a beautifully crafted, gripping read

An ambitious and well-crafted noir that manages to humanise its characters while fashioning their stories into a gripping page-turner

The most riveting look at the dark side of marriage since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?... fascinating. It induced nightmares, at least in this reader. No mean feat

This compulsive thriller works as a sharp satire on loneliness and partnership, and is a beautifully crafted, gripping read

An ambitious and well-crafted noir that manages to humanise its characters while fashioning their stories into a gripping page-turner

The most riveting look at the dark side of marriage since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?... fascinating. It induced nightmares, at least in this reader. No mean feat

This compulsive thriller works as a sharp satire on loneliness and partnership, and is a beautifully crafted, gripping read

An ambitious and well-crafted noir that manages to humanise its characters while fashioning their stories into a gripping page-turner

Books by Adam Ross

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