BEAUTIFUL ANIMALS

The new novel from Lawrence Osborne, critically acclaimed author of Hunters in the Dark, The Ballad of a Small Player, The Forgiven and The Wet and the Dry.

On a hike during a white-hot summer break on the Greek island of Hydra, Naomi and Samantha make a startling discovery: a man, sleeping heavily, exposed to the elements, but still alive. Naomi, the daughter of a wealthy British art collector who has owned a villa in the exclusive hills for decades, convinces Sam, a younger American girl on vacation with her family, to help this stranger, but are her motives borne of altruism - he is, by all appearances, a refugee - or a more selfish desire to bring some excitement into her life? As the two young women learn more about the man and his past, their own burgeoning friendship takes a darker turn, and when a murder occurs on the island, a private investigator arrives and forces them to determine where their true loyalties lie.

In his new novel, a brilliantly atmospheric masterpiece that glows with the sparkling intensity of the Mediterranean sunshine, Osborne returns to the themes that made The Forgiven his breakout novel: the class tensions between wealthy white Europeans and the natives and immigrants who serve them, and the way a violent incident can cause reverberations both psychic and cultural that lay bare our own hypocrisies.

Lawrence Osborne is the author of The Forgiven, The Ballad of a Small Player, Hunters in the Dark, and six books of nonfiction. His short story "Volcano" was selected for the Best American Short Stories 2012, and he has written for the New York Times magazine, The New Yorker, New York Times Book Review, Forbes, Harper's, and several other publications. Hunters in the Dark, was called "dark, teasing, and elegant," by the Financial Times, and NPR praised the "surprising ending . . . that [they] did not see coming." Osborne is consistently compared to Graham Greene and lauded as one of the finest British novelists at work today.