The Library Society is beyond lucky to host the author A.J. Finn as he tours promoting his best-selling debut novel The Woman in the Window. Tickets are $5 for members and $10 for nonmembers. To purchase tickets, call 843-723-9912 or click here.
Intricate, atmospheric, and utterly spellbinding, THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW is one of the most eagerly anticipated literary debuts of the decade—a Rear Window expertly and thrillingly re-imagined for our time, with comparisons being drawn to major publishing events like Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train.
The most widely acquired novel of all time prior to publication, THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW (William Morrow; January 2, 2018) has been sold in 38 territories around the world, and Fox 2000, the makers of Life of Pi and Hidden Figures, preempted the film rights, with Oscar winner Scott Rudin producing and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts writing the script.
What’s behind all the excitement? A gripping psychological thriller about an agoraphobic woman who believes she has witnessed a horrible crime in a neighboring house, combined with one of the most appealing and intelligent heroines in recent fiction, laced with stunning turnarounds, and brimming with allusions to classic suspense films. And who’s the writer behind it? A top young book editor who studied mystery and suspense fiction at Oxford University, who now publishes the work of Agatha Christie, and whose own writing is crafted in homage to the classics from Hitchcock and Highsmith.
At its heart, THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW is a compulsively readable thriller that will captivate a vast audience. Served up in 100 bite-sized chapters, its propulsive narrative is spring-loaded with startling twists and red herrings. Designed to adjust the reader to the rhythms of a life spent in a stringently controlled environment, it then explosively disrupts that life before drawing to its shocking, unsettling, and profoundly satisfying conclusion.
Yet Finn’s first book also offers the reader a richer and more complex experience than most suspense fiction, as one might expect from a writer immersed in mystery books since childhood—who also happens to have focused on suspense fiction as both a scholar and a publishing professional. Finn’s story is informed as well by personal experience battling incorrectly diagnosed bipolar disorder for more than fifteen years.
About A.J. Finn:
A. J. Finn is the author of The Woman in the Window, the most widely acquired debut novel of all time, with rights sold in 38 languages around the world. On its publication in January 2018, the book became the first debut novel in twelve years — and only the third ever — to debut at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, where it remained for an entire month. The novel is currently in its eighth week on the list.
The film adaptation of The Woman in the Window is currently in development at Fox, which bought the rights in a seven-figure deal. The movie will be produced by Oscar winner Scott Rudin, of The Social Network and The Grand Budapest Hotel, and written by Tracy Letts, the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning playwright of August: Osage County.
A. J. delivered the valedictory address at his graduation from Duke, and then enrolled at Oxford, where he spent five years in the Master’s and PhD programs in literature. For a decade he was a book editor and publisher in London and New York, working with authors including J. K. Rowling, Tina Fey, Nelson DeMille, Rafael Nadal, and Patricia Cornwell, as well as the Agatha Christie estate.
He lives in New York City and is currently at work on his second novel.