Sara Gran

This knock-out start to a bracingly original new series features Claire DeWitt, the world’s greatest PI—at least, that's what she calls herself. A one-time teen detective in Brooklyn, she is a follower of the esoteric French detective Jacques Silette, whose mysterious handbook Détection inspired Claire’s unusual practices. Claire also has deep roots in New Orleans, where she was mentored by Silette’s student the brilliant Constance Darling—until Darling was murdered. When a respected DA goes missing she returns to the hurricane-ravaged city to find out why.

A recurrent, unidentifiable noise in her apartment. A memo to her boss that's replaced by obscene insults. Amanda - a successful architect in a happy marriage - finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she's doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea. The new voice in Amanda's head, the one that tells her to steal things and talk to strange men in bars, is strange and frightening, and Amanda struggles to wrest back control of her life. Is she possessed by a demon, or is she simply insane?

From the author of Come Closer and the Claire DeWitt series comes a highly acclaimed—and unusual—gritty thriller about a missing girl...and the addict tasked with saving her. Josephine, a former addict, is offered a thousand dollars to find a suburban couple's missing daughter. But the search will take her into the dark underbelly of New York she thought she'd escaped—and a web of deceit that threatens to destroy her.

Amanda es una arquitecta de éxito felizmente casada, quien, un día, empieza a experimentar extraños fenómenos: una propuesta dirigida a su jefe es sustituida por otra llena de insultos obscenos, unos extraños golpeteos no cesan de oírse en su casa, siente la necesidad de volver a fumar y termina quemando «accidentalmente» a su marido con un cigarro y por las noches sueña con una bella mujer de afilados dientes a la orilla de un mar rojo como la sangre. Amanda siente que su vida ha perdido el equilibrio y está deslizándose por una curva peligrosa, pero no termina de entender por qué. No sabe si está poseída por un demonio o perdiendo la cabeza. En un rincón de su mente no cesa de preguntarse si en realidad no está disfrutando con todo lo que le sucede y eso la aterroriza aún más.

When Paul Casablancas, Claire DeWitt’s musician ex-boyfriend, is found dead in his Mission District home, the police are convinced it’s a simple robbery. But Claire knows nothing is ever simple. With the help of her new assistant, Claude, Claire follows the clues, finding hints to Paul’s fate in her other cases—especially that of a missing girl in the gritty 1980s East Village and a modern-day miniature horse theft in Marin. As visions of the past reveal the secrets of the present, Claire begins to understand the words of the enigmatic French detective Jacques Silette: “The detective won’t know what he is capable of until he encounters a mystery that pierces his own heart.” And love, in all its forms, is the greatest mystery of all—at least to the world’s greatest PI. An addictive new adventure featuring an irresistible heroine.

A recurrent, unidentifiable noise in her apartment. A memo to her boss that's replaced by obscene insults. Amanda - a successful architect in a happy marriage - finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she's doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea. The new voice in Amanda's head, the one that tells her to steal things and talk to strange men in bars, is strange and frightening, and Amanda struggles to wrest back control of her life. Is she possessed by a demon, or is she simply insane?

“In these mysteries, the stakes are existential: knowing one’s self, knowing how to save the people you can save, and knowing that life is worth living even in the midst of pain. Gran is both blowing up the mystery genre and tying herself to its mast—what an incredible light show. Charming, gritty explorations of the greatest mysteries of all: Who are we, and what is this life?” —Kirkus Reviews (Starred) In her first collection of short stories, Sara Gran dives back into DeWitt’s mysterious universe and creates new worlds, drawing on memories of Choose Your Own Adventure novels, Encyclopedia Brown, Two-Minute Mysteries, and teen sleuths. Who destroyed Professor Wolf’s prize-winning tomatoes? What’s behind the mysterious goings-on at Killington Manor? And why does life sometimes feel like we’re stuck in a mystery, with few clues and no solutions? In her first collection of short stories, Sara Gran explores what detective stories mean and why we need them. If you love mysteries, and wonder why, this book is for you. Featuring both new characters and characters from the beloved Claire DeWitt series. “This playful story collection from Gran (the Claire DeWitt series) takes readers on a gleefully irreverent tour of classic crime tropes. . . . Gran’s characters always feel authentic, and the author infuses even her bleakest premises with a sly wit. This is an equally good bet for Gran’s longtime fans and newcomers to her work.” —Publishers Weekly “Sara Gran writes a kind of pop noir that's always about ten years ahead of its time, full of wisdom and life and perfect sentences that make other writers tear their hair out in jealousy. The stories in this book pack more punch than a lot of novels do, and will have you laughing and crying and thinking about the years that’ve slipped away all at once.” —Ed Brubaker, author of Criminal, Reckless, Pulp, and Night Fever “Gran has an arresting, original imagination. These stories are by turns profound, amusing, and just plain fun.” —Sara Paretsky “A truly fun book of stories packed with clever twists and wry humor—not to mention the return of one of my favorite detectives, Claire DeWitt. Little Mysteries is big on smarts, suspense and style. You won't want to miss it.” —Alison Gaylin, Edgar-winning author of We Are Watching “Irresistible . . . the perfect introduction to one of my favorite writers.” —Ed Park, author of Same Bed Different Dreams “A darkly glittering cabinet of delights and curiosities by a master of the craft. Little Mysteries is a hell of a lot of fun.” —John Wray, author of Gone to the Wolves “Sara Gran puts her detectives to work again on the deepest Mysteries. Thrillingly, without fear, they look beyond criminals and crimes, and into the motives of the Universe, of the Answer That Refuses to Appear, of love and of abandonment. Only Gran can take us this deep with this much pleasure in the reading, and so, Little Mysteries magnifies life itself.” —Conner Habib, author of Hawk Mountain

9 Hours and 16 Minutes The “delicious and addictive” (Salon) Claire DeWitt series returns with a thrilling noir mystery that follows three separate narratives starring the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest detective.” As Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls raves, these novels are “cryptic, dreamy, funny and gritty as hell…Claire DeWitt is an unreliable detective unlike any other.” Claire DeWitt, the hard-living and tough-talking private investigator, has always been something of a detective. As a young girl growing up in Brooklyn, Claire and her two best friends, Tracy and Kelly, fell under the spell of the book Detection by legendary French detective Jacques Silette. The three solved many cases together and were inseparable—until the day Tracy vanished without a trace. That is still the only case Claire ever failed to solve. Later, in her twenties, Claire is in Los Angeles trying to get her PI license by taking on a cold case that has stumped the LAPD. She hunts for the real story behind the death of a washed-up painter ten years earlier, whose successful and widely admired artist girlfriend had died a few months before him. Today, Claire is on her way to Las Vegas from San Francisco when she’s almost killed by a homicidal driver. In a haze of drugs and injuries, she struggles off the scene, determined to find her would-be killer’s identity—but the list of people who would be happy to see her dead is not a short one. As these three narratives converge, some mysteries are solved and others continue to haunt. But Claire, battered and bruised, continues her search for the answer to the biggest mystery of all: what is the purpose of our lives, and how can anyone survive in a world so clearly designed to break our hearts again and again?

The highly anticipated new thriller from internationally renowned author Sara Gran, author of Come Closer and the Claire DeWitt series. A mysterious book that promises unlimited power and unrivaled sexual pleasure. A down-on-her-luck book dealer hoping for the sale of a lifetime. And a twist so shocking, no one will come out unscathed. After a tragedy too painful to bear, former novelist Lily Albrecht has resigned herself to a dull, sexless life as a rare book dealer. Until she gets a lead on a book that just might turn everything around. The Book of the Most Precious Substance is a 17th century manual on sex magic, rumored to be the most powerful occult book ever written—if it really exists at all. And some of the wealthiest people in the world are willing to pay Lily a fortune to find it—if she can. Her search for the book takes her from New York to New Orleans to Munich to Paris, searching the dark corners of power where the world’s wealthiest people use black magic to fulfill their desires. Will Lily fulfill her own desires, and join them? Or will she lose it all searching for a ghost? The Book of the Most Precious Substance is an addictive erotic thriller about the lengths we’ll go to get what we need—and what we want.