Skip to content Skip to footer

Mystery Lights

Additional information

Author

Lena Valencia

Release Date

August 6, 2024

Genre

Literary Fiction, Short Story Collection

Publisher

Tin House Books

Categories , , Tag Product ID: 20525

Description

“Full of menace and delight.”
―Kelly Link, author of 
The Book of Love

Set against the stark background of the Southwestern desert, Lena Valencia’s Mystery Lights glows with the promise―and fear―of the world we know and the worlds we don’t, following women and girls as they navigate dangers both supernatural and existential.

An influencer attempts to derail a viral TV marketing campaign with her violent cult following. A marriage between two ghost hunters is threatened when one of them loses her ability to see spirits. The lives of a famous painter in the twilight of her career and a teenage UFO enthusiast converge when a mysterious glowing orb appears in their small desert town. And a slasher-flick screenwriter looking for inspiration escapes a pack of wild dogs only to find herself locked in an SUV with a strange man beside her. Set primarily in deserts throughout the American Southwest, Lena Valencia’s Mystery Lights is a debut collection of stories about women and girls at the crossroads of mundane daily life and existential dread.

From the all-too-real horror of a sexual predator on a college campus to a lost sister transformed by cave-dwelling creatures, Mystery Lights grapples with terrors both familiar and fantastic, introducing an electrifying new voice in contemporary fiction while bringing to light the many faces of the forces that haunt us.

About the Author

Photograph of author ​Lena Valencia

L

​ena Valencia’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in BOMB, Electric Literature, Ninth LetterEpiphany, the anthology Tiny Nightmares, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2019 Elizabeth George Foundation grant and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she is the managing editor and director of educational programming at One Story and the co-host of the reading series Ditmas Lit. Her debut short story collection, Mystery Lights, is forthcoming from Tin House Books in August 2024.

More 2024 Literary Fiction Debuts