Byliner Publishes Maile Meloy's DEVOTION: A Rat Story
In the spirit of the season, the celebrated novelist offers up a creepy-crawly tale
“Don’t let the easy accessibility of Maile Meloy’s writing fool you: she’s capable of witchcraft.” —Time
October 16, 2013—San Francisco—Today Byliner publishes Devotion: A Rat Story ($1.99), by Maile Meloy. Hailed by The New Yorker as “a wise and astonishing conjurer of convincing realities,” Meloy is one of our country’s most celebrated fiction writers. In her scalp-prickling Byliner Original Devotion: A Rat Story, she shows how easily an everyday reality—a young woman’s struggle for an independent life— can become a nightmare, toothy monsters included.
It’s not easy being twenty-something in America, with the economy down and jobs scarce, especially if you’re also a single mother. An art school graduate with a four-year-old daughter, Eleanor is desperate to move out of her parents’ house at last. When a tiny yellow bungalow comes on the market, with a yard and a tree for climbing, it seems perfect for the two of them, and mysteriously affordable. Not until Eleanor enters the house to unpack does she realize she has made a terrible—and terrifying—mistake.
Eleanor hadn’t met the next-door neighbors, and didn’t know what lived there with them—seething through the house, multiplying daily, fat and hungry and spreading out into the neighborhood. When Eleanor tries to confront the onslaught, she is told that these “pets” are not the ones intruding—she is.
An engrossing, exquisitely unsettling tale from an American literary treasure, Devotion will leave you suspicious of your neighbors and fearful of what’s lurking in your backyard, in your living room—or even in your own head.
About the Author: Maile Meloy is the author of the novels Liars and Saints and A Family Daughter, the young adult novels The Apothecary and The Apprentices, and the story collections Half in Love and Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, which was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2009 by the New York Times Book Review. Meloy’s stories have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Granta. She was chosen as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists in 2007 and has received the PEN/Malamud Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
About Byliner: Byliner works directly with the world’s best writers to deliver great stories to readers. Named “one of the 10 Most Innovative Media Companies in the World” (Fast Company), Byliner is a subscription reading service and digital publisher of award-winning short fiction and nonfiction. A Byliner subscription provides unlimited access to more than 30,000 stories by hundreds of bestselling authors, as well as personalized story suggestions based on your reading time and interests. The entire library of Byliner Originals—including bestselling e-books by Amy Tan, Nick Hornby, Margaret Atwood, Jon Krakauer, Ann Patchett, Nicole Krauss, Alexandra Fuller, Richard Russo, and Sebastian Junger—is available in the subscription service and through the major digital bookstores.
Devotion: A Rat Story is available for $1.99 as a Kindle Single at Amazon, a Quick Read at Apple’s iBookstore, a Nook Snap at BarnesAndNoble.com, and a Short Read at Kobo. The story is free to Byliner subscribers at Byliner.com. For an Advance Reading Copy or to schedule an interview with Maile Meloy, please contact Clare Hertel at clare@byliner.com, 505-474-6783.
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