The Cloisters: A Novel by Katy Hays (English) Hardcover Book

Description: The Cloisters by Katy Hays INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A Today Show #ReadwithJenna Book Club Pick "For fans of The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Secret History...The perfect mystery." --Jenna Bush Hager, Today In this "sinister, jaw-dropping" (Sarah Penner, author of The Lost Apothecary) debut novel, a circle of researchers uncover a mysterious deck of tarot cards and shocking secrets in New Yorks famed Met Cloisters. When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its medieval art collection and its group of enigmatic researchers studying the history of divination. Desperate to escape her painful past, Ann is happy to indulge the researchers more outlandish theories about the history of fortune telling. But what begins as academic curiosity quickly turns into obsession when Ann discovers a hidden 15th-century deck of tarot cards that might hold the key to predicting the future. When the dangerous game of power, seduction, and ambition at The Cloisters turns deadly, Ann becomes locked in a race for answers as the line between the arcane and the modern blurs. A haunting and magical blend of genres, The Cloisters is a gripping debut that will keep you on the edge of your seat. FORMAT Hardcover LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography Katy Hays is a writer and adjunct art history professor in California, where she teaches rural students from Truckee to Tecopa. She holds an MA in art history from Williams College and pursued her PhD at UC Berkeley. Having previously worked at major art institutions, including The Clark Art Institute and SF MoMA, she now lives with her husband and dog, Queso, in Olympic Valley, California. The Cloisters is her first novel. Review "Claustrophobic . . . An underhanded antiques dealer, a sexy Cloisters gardener with a side hustle in poisonous plants, a suspicious death or two, a mysterious centuries-old document written in an obscure language, the sense that no one, not even Ann, is telling us the whole truth--all this adds up to a dense forest of a plot . . . Is this a story of the occult, or a story of ambition, or a tale of one (or more!) murderous psychopaths? The answer is a shock, and it sneaks up on you unawares." --The New York Times"A moody and suspenseful story . . . Readers will be fascinated by the evocative setting as well as the behind-the-scenes glimpses into museum curatorship and the cutthroat games of academia . . . An accomplished debut." --Publishers Weekly"A tantalizingly clever tale, laced with surprises as devious as its cast of shadowy scholars, The Cloisters had me gripped from cover to cover. Hayss debut is diabolical and darkly entertaining, a masterwork of literary suspense that surges to an otherworldly conclusion." --Mark Prins, author of The Latinist"Like the moment before a thunderstorm on a summer afternoon, The Cloisters is sultry, lush, and trembling with menace." --Julia May Jonas, author of Vladimir"Mesmerizing . . . A seductive unfurling of lies, envy, and the pull of the occult, The Cloisters does for tarot what The Secret History did for Greek class. This sharp, shadowy book held me in thrall from beginning to star-crossed end." --Sara Sligar, author of Take Me Apart"A story of academic obsession, Renaissance magic and the ruthless pursuit of power. Captivating in every sense of the word." --Sarah Pearse, New York Times bestselling author of The Sanatorium"A sharply smart, engaging debut exploring art, desire, ambition, and privilege set in the mysterious, opulent, famed Cloisters museum in Upper Manhattan, with dark surprises through its final pages. Hays smooth narration deftly conjures the complex, sexy webs between her characters . . . A fun, seductive, intelligent read." --Nicola DeRobertis-Theye, author of The Vietri Project"Sultry and sinister . . . Hayss debut teems with sexual tension, the secrets of divination, and scholarly obsessiveness. With a jaw-dropping twist at the end, The Cloisters serves as a warning to us all: we may think we know what life has in store, but fate and fortune tend to turn their own tricks." --Sarah Penner, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Apothecary"A tour de force by an important new voice, The Cloisters begins as a fish-out-of-water story. But as Katy Hays deftly weaves in layer after layer of the occult, art, and academia, it turns into a rich tapestry that speaks to issues of privilege, power, and ambition--and, more than anything, the darkness lurking just inside ivory towers. Virtuosic and incredibly compelling, The Cloisters grabbed me in a way that no book has done since The Secret History." --Rachel Kapelke-Dale, author of The Ballerinas"Prepare to lose your entire afternoon to The Cloisters, first for its atmosphere, a medieval museum at the tip of Manhattan, and then to pursuing a young scholar in her search for an ancient tarot deck, while keeping a sharp eye on the brilliant, attractive colleagues who may be out to help her or kill her. Good luck staying ahead of this one and have a great time poring over the many treasures inside." --Maria Hummel, author of Reeses Book Club Pick Still Lives Review Quote "Sultry and sinister... Hays debut teems with sexual tension, the secrets of divination, and scholarly obsessiveness. With a jaw-dropping twist at the end, The Cloisters serves as a warning to us all: we may think we know what life has in store, but fate and fortune tend to turn their own tricks." --Sarah Penner, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Apothecary Excerpt from Book Chapter One CHAPTER ONE I would arrive in New York at the beginning of June. At a time when the heat was building--gathering in the asphalt, reflecting off the glass--until it reached a peak that wouldnt release long into September. I was going east, unlike so many of the students from my class at Whitman College who were headed west, toward Seattle and San Francisco, sometimes Hong Kong. The truth was, I wasnt going east to the place I had originally hoped, which was Cambridge or New Haven, or even Williamstown. But when the emails came from department chairs saying they were very sorry... a competitive applicant pool... best of luck in your future endeavors , I was grateful that one application had yielded a positive result: the Summer Associates Program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A favor, I knew, to my emeritus advisor, Richard Lingraf, who had once been something of an Ivy League luminary before the East Coast weather--or was it a questionable happening at his alma mater?--had chased him west. They called it an "associates" program, but it was an internship with a meager stipend. It didnt matter to me; I would have worked two jobs and paid them to be there. It was, after all, the Met. The kind of prestigious imprimatur someone like me--a hick from an unknown school--needed. Well, Whitman wasnt entirely unknown. But because I had grown up in Walla Walla, the dusty, single-story town in southeastern Washington where Whitman was located, I rarely encountered anyone from out of the state who knew of its existence. My whole childhood had been the college, an experience that had slowly dulled much of its magic. Where other students arrived on campus excited to start their adult lives anew, I was afforded no such clean slate. This was because both of my parents worked for Whitman. My mother, in dining services, where she planned menus and theme nights for the first-year students who lived in the residence halls: Basque, Ethiopian, asado. If I had lived on campus, she might have planned my meals too, but the financial waiver Whitman granted employees only extended to tuition, and so, I lived at home. My father, however, had been a linguist--although not one on faculty. An autodidact who borrowed books from Whitmans Penrose Library, he taught me the difference between the six Latin cases and how to parse rural Italian dialects, all in between his facilities shifts at the college. That is, before he was buried next to my grandparents the summer before my senior year, behind the Lutheran church at the edge of town, the victim of a hit-and-run. He never told me where his love of languages had come from, just that he was grateful I shared it. "Your dad would be so proud, Ann," Paula said. It was the end of my shift at the restaurant where I worked, and where Paula, the hostess, had hired me almost a decade earlier, at the age of fifteen. The space was deep and narrow, with a tarnished tin ceiling, and we had left the front door open, hoping the fresh air would thin out the remaining dinner smells. Every now and then a car would crawl down the wide street outside, its headlights cutting the darkness. "Thanks, Paula." I counted out my tips on the counter, trying my best to ignore the arcing red welts that were blooming on my forearm. The dinner rush--busier than usual due to Whitmans graduation--had forced me to stack plates, hot from the salamander, directly onto my arm. The walk from the kitchen to the dining room was just long enough that the ceramic burned with every trip. "You know, you can always come back," said John, the bartender, who released the tap handle and passed me a shifter. We were only allowed one beer per shift, but the rule was rarely followed. I pressed out my last dollar bill and folded the money into my back pocket. "I know." But I didnt want to come back. My father, so inexplicably and suddenly gone, haunted every block of sidewalk that framed downtown, even the browning patch of grass in front of the restaurant. The escapes I had relied on--books and research--no longer took me far enough away. "Even if its fall and we dont need the staff," John continued, "well still hire you." I tried to tamp down the panic I felt at the prospect of being back in Walla Walla come fall, when I heard Paula say behind me, "Were closed." I looked over my shoulder to the front door, where a gaggle of girls had gathered, some reading the menu in the vestibule, others having pushed through the screen door, causing the CLOSED sign to slap against the wood. "But youre still serving," said one, pointing at my beer. "Sorry. Closed," said John. "Oh, come on," said another. Their faces were pinked with the warm flush of alcohol, but I could already see the way the night would end, with black smudges below their eyes and random bruises on their legs. Four years at Whitman, and Id never had a night like that--just shifters and burned skin. Paula corralled them with her outstretched arms, pushing them back through the front door; I turned my attention back to John. "Do you know them?" he asked, casually wiping down the wood bar. I shook my head. It was hard to make friends in college when you were the only student not living in a dorm. Whitman wasnt like a state school where such things were common; it was a small liberal arts college, a small, expensive liberal arts college, where everyone lived on campus, or at least started their freshman year that way. "Town is getting busy. You looking forward to graduation?" He looked at me expectantly, but I met his question with a shrug. I didnt want to talk about Whitman or graduation. I just wanted to take my money home and safely tuck it in with the other tips I had saved. All year, Id been working five nights a week, even picking up day shifts when my schedule allowed. If I wasnt at the library, I was at work. I knew that the exhaustion wouldnt help me outrun my fathers memory, or the rejections, but it did blunt the sharp reality of it. My mother never said anything about my schedule, or how I only came home to sleep, but then, she was too preoccupied with her own grief and disappointments to confront mine. "Tuesday is my last day," I said, pushing myself away from the bar and tipping back what little was left in my glass before leaning over the counter and placing it in the dish rack. "Only two more shifts to go." Paula came up behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist, and as eager as I was for it to be Tuesday, I let myself soften into her, leaning my head against hers. "You know hes out there, right? He can see this happening for you." I didnt believe her; I didnt believe anyone who told me there was a magic to it all, a logic, but I forced myself to nod anyway. I had already learned that no one wanted to hear what loss was really like. Two days later I wore a blue polyester robe and accepted my diploma. My mother was there to take a photograph and attend the Art History department party, held on a wet patch of lawn in front of the semi-Gothic Memorial Building, the oldest on Whitmans campus. I was always acutely aware of how young the building, completed in 1899, was in comparison to those at Harvard or Yale. The Claquato Church, a modest Methodist clapboard structure built in 1857, was the oldest building I had ever seen in person. Maybe that was why I found it so easy to be seduced by the past--it had eluded me in my youth. Eastern Washington was mostly wheatfields and feed stores, silver silos that never showed their age. In fact, during my four years at Whitman, I had been the departments only Early Renaissance student. Tucked safely away from the exploits of major artists like Michelangelo and Leonardo, I preferred to study bit characters and forgotten painters who had names like Bembo or Cossa, nicknames like "messy Tom," or "the squinter." I studied duchies and courts, never empires. Courts were, after all, delightfully petty and fascinated by the most outlandish things--astrology, amulets, codes--things I, myself, found it impossible to believe in. But these fascinations also meant I was often alone: in the library, or in an independent study with Professor Lingraf, who lumbered into our meetings at least twenty minutes late, if he remembered them at all. Despite the impracticality of it all, the overlooked edges of the Renaissance had grabbed me with their gilt and pageantry, their belief in magic, their performances of power. That my own world lacked those things made it an easy choice. I had been warned, however, when I began to think about graduate school, that very few departments would be interested in my work. It was too fringe, too small, not ambitious enough or broad enough. Whitman encouraged its students to reexamine the discipline, become ecocritical, explore the multisensory qualities of human vision. There were times I wondered if the things I studied, the overlooked objects no one wanted, had in fact chosen me, because I often felt powerless to abandon them. In the shade, my mother moved her arms in circles, her silver bracelets jangling as she spoke to another parent. I looked around the party for Lingrafs shock of white hair, but it was clear he had declined to attend. Although we had worked together for the better part of four years, he rarely made appearances at departmental functions or spoke about his own research. No one knew what he was working on these days, or when he would finally stop showing up on campus. In some ways, working with Lingraf had been a liability. When other students and ev Details ISBN1668004402 Author Katy Hays Short Title The Cloisters Pages 320 Publisher Atria Books Language English Year 2022 ISBN-10 1668004402 ISBN-13 9781668004401 Format Hardcover Publication Date 2022-11-01 Imprint Atria Books Subtitle A Novel UK Release Date 2022-11-01 Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2022-11-01 NZ Release Date 2022-11-01 US Release Date 2022-11-01 DEWEY 813.6 Audience General Illustrations Illustrations We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:138960550;

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