Beautiful Animals

The next novel from Lawrence Osborne, critically acclaimed author of Hunters in the Dark 

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. As the two 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 this atmospheric masterpiece, 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. He lives in Bangkok.