NEW YORK TIMESÿBESTSELLER
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
NPR Cosmopolitan Kirkus Reviews BookPage
A page-turning thriller for readers of Stephen King, Gillian Flynn, and Stieg Larsson, Night Film tells the haunting story of a journalist who becomes obsessed with the mysterious death of a troubled prodigy the daughter of an iconic, reclusive filmmaker.
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On a damp October night, beautiful young Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Though her death is ruled a suicide, veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As he probes the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley s life and death, McGrath comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive cult-horror-film director Stanislas Cordova a man who hasn t been seen in public for more than thirty years.
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For McGrath, another death connected to this seemingly cursed family dynasty seems more than just a coincidence. Though much has been written about Cordova s dark and unsettling films, very little is known about the man himself.
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Driven by revenge, curiosity, and a need for the truth, McGrath, with the aid of two strangers, is drawn deeper and deeper into Cordova s eerie, hypnotic world.
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The last time he got close to exposing the director, McGrath lost his marriage and his career. This time he might lose even more.
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Night Film, the gorgeously written, spellbinding new novel by the dazzlingly inventive Marisha Pessl, will hold you in suspense until you turn the final page.
Praise for Night Film
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Night Film has been precision-engineered to be read at high velocity, and its energy would be the envy of any summer blockbuster. Your average writer of thrillers should lust for Pessl s deft touch with character. Joe Hill, The New York Times Book Review
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Mysterious and even a little head-spinning, an amazing act of imagination. Dean Baquet, The New York Times Book Review
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Maniacally clever . . . Cordova is a monomaniacal genius who creeps into the darkest crevices of the human psyche. . . . As a study of a great mythmaker, Night Film is an absorbing act of myth-making itself. . . . Dastardly fun . . . The plot feels like an M. C. Escher nightmare about Edgar Allan Poe. . . . You ll miss your subway stop, let dinner burn and start sleeping with the lights on. The Washington Post
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Haunting . . . a suspenseful, sprawling page-turner. USA Today
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Entrancing and delightful . . . [a] whipsmart humdinger of a thriller . . . It feels, above all things, new. The Boston Globe
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Gripping . . . a masterful puzzle . . . Pessl builds up real suspense. Entertainment Weekly
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A very deeply imagined book . . . sprints to an ending that s equal parts nagging and haunting: What lingers, beyond all the page-turning, is a density of possible clues that leaves you leafing backward, scanning fictional blog comments and newspaper clippings, positive there s some secret detail that will snap everything into focus. New York
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Hypnotic . . . The real and the imaginary, life and art, are dizzyingly distorted not only in a Cordova night film . . . but in Pessl s own Night Film as well. Vanity Fair
