About this Event
Join us for an in-person event with Bram Stoker Award recipient Sarah Langan for a discussion of her new novel A Better World. Joining Sarah in conversation is Patrick Radden Keefe, the New York Times best-selling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.
Can’t make the event?
STRAND IN-PERSON EVENT COVID-19 POLICY:
Masks and vaccination checks are not required for entry.* Attendees are welcome to wear a mask if they choose. If you do not have a mask and would like one, The Strand will provide masks at the door.
*Please note this is subject to change any time before or during the event per the author’s request.
ACCESSIBILITY:
Strand Book Store is an ADA compliant venue. The event space is accessible via elevator. Please ask a Strand employee upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred.
ASL interpretation is available for this event by request only. Please reach out to our events team at [email protected] by April 1st to request.
For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact
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A cunning, outside-the-box satirical thriller about a family’s odyssey into an exclusive enclave for the wealthy that might not be as ideal as it seems.
You’ll be safe here. That’s what the tour guide tells the Farmer-Bowens when they visit Plymouth Valley, a walled-off company town with clean air, pantries that never go empty, and blue-ribbon schools. On a very trial basis, the company offers to hire Linda Farmer’s husband, Russell, a numbers genius, and relocate her whole family to this bucolic paradise for the .0001 percent. Though Linda will have to sacrifice her medical career back home, the family jumps at the opportunity. They’d be crazy not to take it. With the outside world falling apart, this might be the Farmer-Bowens’ last chance.
But fitting in takes work. The pampered locals distrust outsiders, snubbing Linda, Russell, and their teen twins. And the residents fervently adhere to a group of customs and beliefs called Hollow...but what exactly is Hollow?
It’s Linda who brokers acceptance, by volunteering her medical skills to the most influential people in town through their pet charity, ActHollow. In the months afterward, everything seems fine. Sure, Russell starts hyperventilating through a paper bag in the middle of the night, and the kids have become secretive, but living in Plymouth Valley is worth sacrificing their family’s closeness, isn’t it? At least they’ll survive. The trouble is, the locals never say what they think. They seem scared. And Hollow’s ominous culminating event, the Plymouth Valley Winter Festival, is coming.
Linda is warned by her husband and her powerful new friends to stop asking questions. But the more she learns, the more frightened she becomes. Should the Farmer-Bowens be fighting to stay, or fighting to get out?
Sarah Langan’s latest novel, A Better World, is gleefully ruthless in its dissection of wealth, power, and privilege, timely in its depiction of a self-destructing world—and it is a prescient warning to us all.
Sarah Langan, a Columbia MFA graduate and three-time recipient of the Bram Stoker Award, is the author of several novels including A Better World and Good Neighbors. She grew up on Long Island and she currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughters. Find out more at SarahLangan.com.
Photo credit: David Zaugh
Patrick Radden Keefe is an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of five books, including the New York Times bestsellers Empire of Pain and Say Nothing, and most recently, Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks. He is also the creator and host of the podcast "Wind of Change," about the strange convergence of Cold War espionage and heavy metal music.
Photo credit: Philip Montgomery
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Strand Book Store, 828 Broadway, New York, United States
USD 5.00 to USD 28.99