Cobble Hill

New novel brings to life a small Long Island town

Brooklyn BookBeat: NY-Based Author to Speak in Cobble Hill

May 14, 2015 Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Christopher Bollen will visit BookCourt in Cobble Hill to speak about his book on May 27. Photo by Sebastian Kim
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New Yorker Christopher Bollen brings his personal life into his fiction writing as he ventures into the world of Long Island in his newest book, “Orient.”

“Orient” is now on sale, and Bollen will visit BookCourt in Cobble Hill for a launch event on May 27.

A perilous clash of cultures — between natives and newcomers, wind-beaten lifers and wealthy interlopers — has come to define many corners of contemporary Long Island. Now, in “Orient,” Bollen captures a North Fork town in a moment of crisis, when peril suddenly gives way to panic.

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As summer draws to a close, the town is plagued by a series of mysterious deaths — and one young man, a loner taken in by a local, tries to piece together the crimes before his own time runs out.

Orient is an isolated hamlet on the North Fork of Long Island — a quiet, historic village that swells each summer with vacationers, Manhattan escapees and wealthy young artists from the city with designs on local real estate.

On the last day of summer, a teenage drifter named Mills Chevern arrives in town. Soon after, the village is rocked by a series of unsettling events: the local caretaker is found floating lifeless in the ocean; an elderly neighbor dies under mysterious circumstances; and a monstrous animal corpse is discovered on the beach not far from a research lab often suspected of harboring biological experiments.

Before long, other more horrific events plunge the community into a spiral of paranoia.

As the village struggles to make sense of the wave of violence, anxious eyes settle on the mysterious Mills, a troubled orphan with no family, a hazy history and unknown intentions. But he finds one friend in Beth, an Orient native in retreat from Manhattan, who is determined to unravel the mystery before the small town devours itself. 

Earning advance praise from readers, “Orient” is a riveting literary thriller set in the real-life town by that name, on the island’s East End. Award-winning novelist A. M. Homes has hailed the novel as “a compelling novel of tragic suspense” with “tightly drawn characters and an ominous sense of place.” And author Nelson DeMille says, “Christopher Bollen will hold you spellbound” with this novel “that recalls the worlds of both P.D. James and ‘Twin Peaks.’”

The May 27 event will begin at 7 p.m. BookCourt is located at 163 Court St. in Cobble Hill.

 


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