“Obsession and the unexplained take center stage with this novel of a young woman piecing together the last days of her mother’s strange life.”
On a scorching summer day, Renata returns home to find her estranged mother’s contents on her doorstep. Renata’s aunt and cousin eagerly conclude that troublesome Corrine is dead, but Renata isn’t convinced. She starts to go through her mother’s journals and among the usual descriptions of her work at the McNairy Observatory, Renata discovers her obsession with an early twentieth-century surveyor. Accounts of the surveyor reveal encounters with a mysterious entity, each a startling resemblance to Corrine’s reports.
Compelled to find answers, Renata travels to that abandoned outpost in the Nevada wilderness. But there’s a decades old clash between science and the desert in McNairy that complicates Renata’s quest. The suspicious residents refuse to talk about the closing of the observatory. Renata wonders if her mother’s version of events mirror reality. Ascending the peak, Renata bears witness to unexplainable phenomena, unable to shake the creeping dread that what is waiting for her at the mountain top isn’t her mother at all.
Why we’re excited about this book:
2026 is certainly looking up as a year for stellar horror novel debuts, and Nicholas Russell’s forthcoming is no exception. With short fiction and poetry in such publications as Hobart After Dark, McSweeney’s, Conjunctions, Paranoid Tree, and Columbia Journal to name a few, Russell is the managing editor at Still Alive Magazine, and a contributing writer at Defector. Obsession and the unexplained take center stage with this novel of a young woman piecing together the last days of her mother’s strange life. August Clarke (Metal From Heaven, The Felicity Complex) says: “Observer is a sweltering, mesmeric debut: ancient and immediate, gruesome and grand. This book gets under your skin.”, and Brian Evenson (Song for the Unraveling of the World, Last Days) says: “H. P. Lovecraft understands the weirdness of New England, Jeff Vandermeer understands the weirdness of Florida, Reggie Oliver understands the weirdness of the stage. But nobody understands the parched and spiny weirdness of Nevada like Nicholas Russell does. A vivid embodiment of place and a merciless excavation of the complexities of family, Observer is an impressive debut.”
Releasing from Ecco 15 September 2026, Observer by Nicholas Russell is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA
