It’s Private Eye July at BookPage! This month, we’re celebrating the sinister side of fiction with the year’s best mysteries and thrillers. Look for the Private Eye July magnifying glass for a dose of murder, espionage and all those creepy neighbors with even creepier secrets.

Praised by horrormeister Stephen King, Paul Tremblay’s shocking new novel, The Cabin at the End of the World, is an often graphic account of one family’s ordeal when their vacation is shattered in a cult-like home invasion. We asked Tremblay about the book’s origins, its dark path and his inner fears that helped forge the novel.

How does it feel to receive a compliment from a literary horror master like King?
I was a mathematics major in college and about to go off to a graduate program for two years, and Lisa (my wife) gave me The Stand for my 22nd birthday. It would be a cliché to say that book changed my life, but it did. I haven’t stopped reading King since. I became a reader—never mind a writer—because of Stephen King. That Stephen now reads my books and enjoys them is one of the highlights of my career.

Your previous novel, A Head Full of Ghosts, was a Stoker Award winner for best horror novel in 2015. What is it like to follow up a book that’s been so well received? Did it change your writing process at all?
The response to A Head Full of Ghosts has been amazing and thrilling. I’d be lying if I said I don’t feel a little extra pressure trying to follow it up. Some of that OK, what the heck are you going write now? is natural and healthy. Letting it take over and paralyze the process is not healthy.

Aside from worrying if what I’m working on was as good as AHFoG or not, my writing process hasn’t been changed. Cabin is my seventh novel, and while I still have to push through plenty of doubt and anxiety, I’ve earned a little bit of confidence. I’ve been to the finish line with those other novels, so it’s a bit easier to believe I can get there again with the next one.

A few years ago I was in the midst of gnashing my teeth while working on my novel Disappearance at Devil’s Rock. I sent friend/mentor/genius Stewart O’Nan an email telling him I was worried the book wasn’t as good as the last novel and didn’t know how people would react to it, blah blah blah.

He said, “Eh, not everything you’re going to write is going to be great.” I laughed out loud when I read the email, and it was exactly what I needed to here. I still find his pithy quote oddly comforting, reaffirming and inspiring. Maybe I should put it on a T-shirt.

“Most horror stories feature the reveal of a horrible truth (or potential truth) or some terrible event, ambiguous or not. My favorite stories then focus on the aftermath and on what the characters are going to do next. What decisions are they going to make?”

There are some shocking developments in store for each of the characters in Cabin. Did you ever pause midstream during writing those scenes to ask, “Did I just go too far?”
I never thought or asked that question during the writing of Cabin. But that doesn’t mean there’s not a pause when it comes to the use of violence.

In Cabin the cast is so small and the violence is up close and personal, so my pause was about making sure to take the proper amount of time to figure out how the violence was to be portrayed and how it affected the characters. I did not want those scenes to simply be about titillation or shock, although there’s no denying there are elements of both whenever violence is used in entertainment/art. I hope those scenes are super disturbing in Cabin, and I hope I’m successful in treating the experiences of both the victim and perpetrator(s) of the violent act with authenticity. There are great and terrible consequences to any act of violence, and they reverberate beyond the act itself. The survivors and witnesses are fundamentally changed by what they experienced. There’s no going back for anyone after the horror and transgression of violence.

This story is powerful both emotionally and viscerally. How do you balance the two for the benefit of the reader?
Thank you! I think if you treat all of your characters, even the odious ones, with empathy (not sympathy; there’s a difference), the reader will be willing to follow you into dark places. When you use empathy as a base—the want to understand a character, why she does what she does, says what she says—I think it’s easier to build trust with the reader, particularly in a horror/suspense story. That’s not to say bad things won’t happen or there won’t be surprises, but the reader’s emotional investment is rewarded because that investment was grounded in empathy.

Most horror stories feature the reveal of a horrible truth (or potential truth) or some terrible event, ambiguous or not. My favorite stories then focus on the aftermath and on what the characters are going to do next. What decisions are they going to make? How are they going to live through this? And by proxy, we readers ask, how are we going to live through this?

“There are great and terrible consequences to any act of violence, and they reverberate beyond the act itself.”

Where did the genesis for this novel come from? Is there some inner fear that you have that you’ve incorporated here?
I was on a plane scribbling in one of my notebooks, looking for a new novel/story idea, and I looked down to find I’d randomly drawn a cabin. (An artist I am not, by the way.) I looked at the cabin and drew a few stick figures (again, not an artist) outside the cabin, and I got to thinking about the home-invasion subgenre of horror. It’s a subgenre that I really don’t enjoy all that much. There are some books/films that I like (Wait Until Dark, Ils (Them), Hush), but generally, too many of those stories are mean-spirited, cynical and at times sadistic. With all that in mind, I was excited by the challenge of writing a home-invasion story that I would want to read. So why not a home-invasion-maybe-the-apocalypse-is-happening-too story? Very early in the process, the book became an allegory for our current socio-political predicament, which was another hook for me.

Home-invasion stories scare me for sure, but I think one of my biggest metaphysical fears is represented in the novel, but I can’t really talk about it with spoiling the whole thing. Sorry!

Many writers believe they are their own harshest critic. Is that the case with you as well, and if so, what do you do to silence that inner critic?
I’m harsh on myself. But let’s be honest, I’m not as harsh as the online one-star critic who says, “This book is boring and stupid and smells like poo.” The smell part is the most hurtful.

As much as a pain in the butt as he is, I don’t want to totally silence my inner critic. Generally he’s helpful. When the inner critic’s voice gets too loud, I promise him I’ll deal with him and his concerns, but later, and not until after I write my 500 new words for the day.

What are you working on next?
I just finished a draft of my short story collection Growing Things and Other Stories. It’s due to be published summer 2019. The collection features a few stories that have connections to my novels, including one story that features adult Merry from A Head Full of Ghosts after her tell-all book was published. I’m working on a short screenplay for a secret project, and I need to get off my duff and start the next novel. That, and working on helping my kid visit and apply to colleges. Send help.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Cabin at the End of the World.

Debut author Daniel Nieh’s Beijing Payback is an international thriller, a meditation on grief and an action-packed coming-of-age story. College student Victor Li and his sister, Jules, are shattered by their father’s murder. But they’ve only just begun to mourn when they learn the shocking truth about their dad’s past: He wasn’t just the successful owner of three Chinese restaurants. Rather, he’d been a member of a global crime organization for decades, and he wants vengeance from beyond the grave.

We talked to Nieh about the genesis of the book, how his other careers have influenced his writing and the power of secrets.

At the very beginning of Beijing Payback, you include a Note on Language to help readers understand who’s speaking which language when, pronunciations, etc.—an extension, presumably, of your work as a Chinese-English translator. After serving as a conduit for communication among others, did sharing your own stories directly with readers seem like a natural next step for you? Via your translation work, are there things you’ve learned about yourself, about others, about communicating, that were particularly important to your writing?
Translation is great writing practice, because it requires being sensitive to idiom and turn of phrase. But the decision to write Beijing Payback in both English and Chinese stems less from my work as a translator and more from my experience as an American. In our incredibly diverse country, there are many places where another language is just as important as English, and the starting point of this book, the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles, is one of them. In the same way that Junot Díaz and Cormac McCarthy have used Spanish in their novels to demonstrate the fluidity in which some Americans switch between the two, I wanted to show how Victor Li’s American family spans two languages.

Your work as a model is another way to convey messages, emotions and artistic intentions. How do you think your aptitude for such performance might inform your work as an author (not just writing, but doing readings, events, etc.)?
Being a model means facing the scrutiny of others and the insecurities of one’s self all the time. I remember when I first learned how to walk for a fashion show from one of my bookers at my agency in Beijing. In the dark hallway between half-built offices, he showed me how, throwing his head back and walking strong and straight without looking around—he was short, with long, flowing hair, and his self-chosen English name was Fab. He said there were two keys to success on the catwalk: being relaxed and being confident. As a model, failure is your friend. If you book 10% of the jobs you go to castings for, you’re doing great. Those experiences are a reason why I was able to complete a manuscript in the first place: I’m not afraid of failure, my own imperfections or the judgments of others.

“Being a model means facing the scrutiny of others and the insecurities of one’s self all the time. . . . I’m not afraid of failure, my own imperfections or the judgments of others.”

Victor Li plays basketball in college. Even though he’s not likely to make the sport a profession like his super-talented best friend Andre, he practices, plays and considers it a defining aspect of his life. What about his dedication to basketball, and the way he feels about the sport, helps him handle what happens when his life goes haywire? You’ve played basketball, too—what does the sport mean to you?
Like Victor, I was obsessed with basketball as a teenager and a young adult. I started out as an uncoordinated bench warmer, but eventually I became pretty good. The stuff people say about sports is true: You learn the value of concentration and perseverance. You achieve flow states. At a time when I didn’t know how to talk to girls or wear my pants, I could at least shut down the other team’s best scorer and then make a reverse layup on the fast break. In other words, basketball gave me my first taste of mastery, which is an incredibly engaging sensation. I later achieved mastery in the Chinese language and am working on achieving it in storytelling and prose.

Speaking of Victor’s life going haywire, the revelation that his recently murdered dad, Vincent, was not just a beloved restaurateur but also a founding member of a Chinese crime syndicate is shocking, to say the least! And a great way to kick off a series of ever-wilder adventures. Is the notion that we all have secrets something that strikes a chord with you and makes you want to explore it in fiction? Are you good at keeping secrets, or sensing when someone has one?
I’m terrible at keeping secrets! I love to converse and share with people, and to talk about people, because people are so interesting. I’m working on becoming less of a gossip. So this loquaciousness is a way in which I’m different from Victor and Vincent Li. I’m interested in the secrets that immigrant parents might try to separate from their new American lives—including their new American children. My father never speaks much about his life before he arrived in the United States on a refugee visa. Perhaps they aren’t fond memories. That’s the case with Vincent Li, who grew up in the Communist China that my father escaped. He wants to look forward, not backward. He doesn’t want his children to know what he’s done to make their lives possible.

“I’m interested in the secrets that immigrant parents might try to separate from their new American lives—including their new American children.”

Victor, Jules and Victor’s friends are all in their early 20s. What is it about that life stage that compelled you to choose it for Beijing Payback’s central characters?
My understanding of the world opened up when I went to college and then to China. I learned that my privileged life was just one kind of life out there, and in fact, it was only possible because, elsewhere, people were working incredibly hard for very little pay. Those years are also the heart of that second phase of the child-parent relationship, when we have stopped idolizing our parents and started resenting them. There’s a third phase as well, when we learn how to appreciate our parents for who they really are. But the second phase is fascinating because it’s the time in which we define ourselves in contrast to the people who shaped us.

The desire for revenge, or at least comeuppance, is something we all experience, some much more intensely or dramatically than others. The Li family’s experience is certainly intense and dramatic! What do you think about revenge and the way it can intersect with grief or regret? Do you think Victor’s quest was ultimately a good or bad decision? Have you ever had the urge for retribution? Do any favorite revenge-themed stories inspire you?
I think we all have some experience of those urges, but they aren’t appealing to me. I don’t believe in the concept of “just desserts.” Without spoiling anything, I will say that this story is more about empathizing with people who do bad things—even to you or your family—than about deriving satisfaction from harming them. And the stories that inspired me—such as Motherless Brooklyn and Rule of the Bone—are also stories of confused young men setting out with a certain goal, being disappointed and growing up in the process.

The action scenes are exciting and suspenseful, and Victor’s what-the-hell-is-going-on asides inject some fun, too. Was crafting the action scenes a different process for you, versus writing scenes that were more focused on dialogue, inner monologue, etc.? Did you do anything to help visualize how those scenes might look and feel?
It’s hard to know how much detail to give. “He lifted his left foot, shifted his weight, raised his right hand”—snore. I eventually realized that I hold my breath when I read action scenes. I want to skip to the bottom, to the next set of quotation marks, and see how things turn out. So when I’m writing action, I try to avoid clichés and make it so the prose is too interesting to skim over. And I put myself in Victor’s shoes—if I were in a Beijing skyscraper at age 22 and bullets were whizzing by my head, what would I be focused on? In this way, the action is also character development: We see that Victor is freaking out in a relatable way, just like we would be, but at the same time, he’s skilled and resourceful, and he never loses his sense of humor.

Victor and Jules have to grapple not only with a host of new information about their father but also with how they feel about the privileges and safety they enjoyed even as Vincent’s crime syndicate caused others so much pain. What about the notion of the past being able to upend the present intrigues you? Do you think present-day beneficiaries owe something to those who were harmed in the past?
Every part of the United States is built upon the blood, sweat and tears of immigrants, many of whom crawled over corpses just to get into the country. The peaceful suburb where Victor grows up is no exception. I chose San Dimas because it’s the setting of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which is really a story about being oblivious to history. The globalized moment we live in is a truly bizarre pastiche that only seems mundane if we’re as oblivious as Bill and Ted. We drive Japanese cars, eat Mexican produce, shave our bodies with German razors and listen to music created by the descendants of African slaves. We live on stolen land. We live within a bloody history, and it’s still unfolding, even though the bleeding mostly occurs out of sight of those who have benefited the most.

At the end of the book (no spoilers here!), it feels like, just maybe, Victor’s story hasn’t been fully told just yet. Do you indeed have plans to continue his adventures? If so, any preliminary thoughts you want to share about that—or other writerly things you’ve got coming up?
I have always envisioned Victor’s story as a three-book epic. Rather than repeating a mystery formula, these books will show his evolution. I just spent six months overseas, researching the sequel. I won’t say where, but I will say that the main language spoken there is neither Chinese nor English.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Beijing Payback.

Author photo by Steven Patenaude

Accomplished, tormented artist Miranda Brand is at the heart of Sara Sligar’s Take Me Apart. Alas, readers and protagonist Kate Aitken may only meet Miranda after her death, via the paper detritus she has left behind: letters, news clippings, receipts, legal documents, prints and lecture notes. The famous photographer’s son, Theo, hires Kate to archive Miranda’s personal effects in preparation for auction. It’s an exciting opportunity and, Kate hopes, just the thing to reset her own career and mental health. But Callinas, California, while beautiful and beachy, is an insular small town rife with relentless speculation about Miranda’s death. As the days pass and the questions persist, Kate’s professional fascination evolves into personal obsession. Was the artist’s purported suicide actually murder?

It’s easy to see why Take Me Apart earned a spot on many lists of 2020’s most-anticipated titles, including BookPage’s own Women to Watch. Sligar is herself an artist of words, and her debut novel will unsettle, provoke and linger.

The cover of Take Me Apart is intriguing upon first look, and ultimately reveals itself to be very well-suited to the tale that lies within. Did you have any input into the cover-art process? How did you react when you saw the final cover and held your first book (congratulations!) for the first time?
I love the cover so much! It’s by Alex Merto at FSG, and I am so grateful to him and Rodrigo Corral, the art director, for all the work they put into it. It took a while to find the right cover, since everyone wanted it to appeal to both mystery/thriller fans and literary fiction fans. But we got there! I’m glad it took so long since we wound up with something so amazing and graphic and eye-grabbing. Seeing the final cover was definitely emotional for me. It made the whole process feel more real.

“But one influence you can definitely see in Take Me Apart is the influence of gothic literature—I love spooky, atmospheric books.”

After studying literature and history in pursuit of your M.Phil. and Ph.D., what eras, genres or authors resonate most with you, whether as inspiration for your own work or as books you treasure as a reader?
I read widely across many genres. I think genre is a very meaningful concept in that it represents a contract with the reader and a relationship with literary tradition. But I also think that genre divisions can be used to marginalize readers or invalidate books. I love to read romance, mystery, horror, literary fiction, speculative fiction and memoir, but I also love some books that aren’t in any of those genres. In terms of influence on my writing, it’s a grab bag. But one influence you can definitely see in Take Me Apart is the influence of gothic literature—I love spooky, atmospheric books.

Which character came first—Miranda or Kate? Was one of the women more challenging to write than the other?
Miranda came first and was easier to write. Mostly because her sections, which are told through archival documents like letters and journal entries, are more confessional. Kate is more a restrained character, so it took some time for me to figure out how to let her guard down enough that the reader could connect to her, while still presenting her the way I envisioned. There were always going to be two characters. It was just a question of figuring out how those two characters balanced each other.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Take Me Apart.

You must be quite adept at gleaning stories and truths from research and archives, thanks to your work at a museum and your years of scholarship. Have you assembled your own personal archives? What do you think we can learn from what people choose to save or discard, how they preserve it and the value assigned to various artifacts?
Well, I have assembled the raw material of my own personal archives by never throwing any papers away! But I would not say the papers are organized like an archive. I did think a lot about what it would feel like to have someone come in and organize my papers. I would kind of love it, because then I could find everything, but I would also hate it, because (as we see in the novel!) the person organizing the archive gets to make their own story out of your life. Any archive tells us not only about the psychology of the person who created or saved the documents, but also about the psychology of the person organizing it and how they interpret the documents.

What led you to choose New York City in the 1970s and ’80s as the era for Miranda’s photography and her husband Jake’s painting? What made that time period and those art forms feel right to you for your characters?
I think it was more important for Miranda’s photography than for Jake’s painting. Without giving too much away about the book, I think Miranda is more authentically connected to that moment in art, which is intentional. I was very interested in that time period because it had so many brilliant, successful female artists, many of whom took a very autobiographical approach to their work—Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Francesca Woodman, among many others. I wanted to explore that question of autobiography in art, as well as the differences in expectations for male and female artists, and that era seemed like the perfect fit.

You explore mental illness in empathetic and unflinching depth in your book—from Miranda’s and Kate’s perspectives as they suffer and attempt to find peace, as well as from the viewpoints of those who care about them and attempt to provide help. What was most valuable for you as you researched and created these characters?
I wanted both characters’ experiences with mental illness to be realistic and complex. With many mental illnesses, the experience is not a unilaterally negative one—even behaviors that seem destructive from the outside can feel comforting or relieving or exciting from the inside, although they can also feel deeply painful. I think the most valuable thing was just talking to lots and lots of people about the book, so that I could feel confident in the complexity and range of the representations.

Our society worships and elevates fame, but through Miranda we see the ways in which the pressure to produce, fulfill expectations and make money can harm mental health, familial relationships and the talent that drew the fame in the first place. Why was it important to you to explore the corrosive aspects of celebrity in this book?
I’m very interested in the question of ownership and entitlement when it comes to artists and celebrities. Why do we take their lives so personally? Why was I sad when Heidi Klum and Seal broke up? I don’t know either of them! They’re probably living their truths! In Take Me Apart, Miranda craves fame and recognition; she wants to leave a mark on the world, and fame gives her that opportunity. She does have a kind of immortality that other people don’t have. But as you say, that immortality does come at a price for her, and the price is higher than it is for the men in her life. I wanted to explore that trade-off.

Dubiously successful surfing lessons, an astoundingly ill-advised cake and potential romance with Theo . . . all are bright spots amid the darkness and despair Kate uncovers as she archives. How did you maintain your own lightness of being, so to speak, as you worked through the more wrenching elements of the story? 
I’m glad those moments were bright spots for you! I didn’t want the book to feel unrelenting. I wanted there to be ups and downs. Some parts were very emotional for me to write, but I’m not sure how to say which ones without giving big spoilers. I guess the question about lightness of being is really a question about self-care. I have gotten better at self-care over the years. Mostly for me, it means letting myself stop and do something new when I hit a wall. Dogs help!

What surprised you most (and least) about what it was like to write and publish your first book? Are there any lessons learned, delights discovered, etc., that you’ll keep in mind as you embark on your upcoming second novel?
Probably the most surprising thing has been how much it becomes a team effort. You labor alone so long writing the first (and second and seventh) drafts, and then suddenly the door opens and other people come in! Surprise! Time to put on pants! It’s exciting. I have been amazed and honored by how hard the people at my publisher have worked on the book. It has been a deeply collaborative effort.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with BookPage readers about what’s coming up next for you?
I have a second novel under contract, which I am working on now! Stay tuned for that. I also continue to pursue my longtime dream of competing on the Netflix show “Nailed It!”, so if any BookPage readers have an inside track, please let me know.

Failing technology and an unknown disaster loom over the events in Rumaan Alam’s smart and terrifying novel.

There’s a stranger at the door. The phone doesn’t work. We’re trapped here. These are some of the many thriller elements that writer Rumaan Alam incorporates into his new novel, Leave the World Behind. Yet despite the familiarity of these tropes, the 43-year-old novelist has written a wholly unique story that feels of the moment for all the darkest reasons.

Leave the World Behind features Clay and Amanda, white parents from Brooklyn who have rented a summer home in an isolated part of Long Island. Their vacation has just begun when the house’s owners, George and Ruth, a wealthy Black couple, arrive unexpectedly in the middle of the night. George and Ruth apologize for interrupting the family’s vacation, but there has been a strange blackout in New York City.

A blackout doesn’t seem like such a big deal, Amanda thinks. She’s not entirely convinced that George and Ruth are who they say they are and wishes they would leave. But the homeowners explain that they sensed they would be safer outside the city. Safer from what, no one can be sure.

“That parental fear is really a primal fear.”

Alam wrote the first draft of Leave the World Behind in only three weeks, during what he describes as a “fevered state.” The novel is a true departure for the author, whose previous books, Rich and Pretty and That Kind of Mother, stick to the intimate realms of family drama and women’s relationships. They certainly aren’t quite so creepy.

“I wanted to write a book that appeared to be very domestic but actually was talking about the whole world,” Alam explains during a call to his home in Brooklyn. The novel’s inspiration came from a summer vacation taken by Alam with his husband, the photographer David A. Land, and their 8- and 11-year-old boys. George and Ruth’s luxurious second house is based on one the author rented via Airbnb.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of Leave the World Behind.

Leave the World Behind unfolds over just a few days, and the momentum of the increasing dread is masterful. “I hoped that the book would have the sense of a ticking clock,” Alam says, “that once you’re in the world of the book, time is mirroring your experience of reading it.” He describes that kind of page-turning, stay-up-all-night reading experience as “sticky.”

In this, Alam undoubtedly succeeds. However, the book isn’t trying to be a mystery for the reader to decipher. “There’s a lot the book does not answer, in part because I don’t know the answers to those things,” Alam says. “The book raises 30 questions, and I think it answers, like, 12 of them.” Throughout the novel, snippets of explanations provoke more questions—scarier questions—a few pages later. And amid the mounting horror, the book’s messages about privilege, safety and comfort—as well as gender and race—slowly but deliberately sharpen into focus.

Unsurprisingly, Alam was influenced by Jordan Peele’s 2017 film, Get Out, another tale in which a seemingly benign excursion careens into pure terror. Alam also sought to conjure the “psychological menace” of the film adaptation of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, based on the 1962 Edward Albee play. Other influences include Stephen King’s 1983 horror novel Pet Sematary and Paul Beatty’s 2015 novel, The Sellout.

Much of the dread, confusion and fear in Leave the World Behind comes down to technology: The internet is down, and the radio and TV aren’t working. Alam knew that readers would relate to the experience of having a bad Wi-Fi connection or their cellphone being out of range. But we also trust these devices to eventually reconnect. What if they didn’t? For the characters in Leave the World Behind, frustration at the lack of concrete information soon turns to panic. Speculation replaces fact. The terror lies in the unknown.

These fears will resonate with readers, Alam thinks, due to not only the pandemic but also political malaise. “It’s clear to me that the book is born of a feeling of dread [that] has been in politics, or in the culture, for a couple of years now,” he says.

Like many authors, Alam mined his own fears for his novel, and his concerns come down to a feeling of powerlessness. Writing, he jokes, would be essentially useless toward keeping his children alive during a disaster. “I have nothing to offer my children in the event of a calamity,” he says.

After all, there’s almost nothing scarier in a book than what you fear will happen to your children. “That parental fear is really a primal fear,” Alam says, and Leave the World Behind holds nothing back in exploring how far that fear can go.

Author photo by David A. Land