Bright Objects
‘A LITERARY MYSTERY OF CONSUMMATE ELEGANCE AND GRAVITY’.
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‘A LITERARY MYSTERY OF CONSUMMATE ELEGANCE AND GRAVITY’. ✶
A luminous literary thriller about a young widow, an astronomer, a mystic, and a comet.
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“A novel written with immense grace, beauty, and depth, Bright Objects plumbs the farthest reaches of one widow's grief... A surprising, thrilling, and seductively dangerous comet of a book.”
— Chelsea Bieker, author of Godshot and Madwoman
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“A literary mystery of consummate elegance and gravity.”
— Jessica Au, author of Cold Enough for Snow
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“The X-Files meets Nick Cave's Ghosteen—science, faith, and human folly collide in this celestial melodrama.”
— Laura Elizabeth Woollett, author of The Newcomer and Beautiful Revolutionary
“It was not until the end that I saw St John for what it was,
a sign of destruction and strange rebirth,
and then all that had occurred seemed obvious somehow;
inevitable as the looping line of its course.”
January 1997: In the small town of Jericho, New South Wales, Sylvia Knight is losing hope that the person who killed her husband will ever face justice. Since the night of the hit-and-run, her world has been shrouded in hazy darkness—until she meets Theo St John, the discoverer of a rare comet soon to be visible overhead.
As the comet begins to brighten, visitors flock like pilgrims into town, and more and more people are drawn into the orbit of Joseph Evans, an enigmatic local who believes the comet's arrival is nothing short of a divine message. But Sylvia will soon realise that she isn't the only one haunted by the past. While everyone else is looking to the night sky for answers, her quest to uncover her husband's killer will unearth long-held secrets with far-reaching consequences.
Australian release
April 30
US release
July 16
ISTI MIRANT STELLA
“These men marvel at the star”
Photo: Nabeel Khan
Ruby Todd is an Australian writer with a PhD in writing and literature. She is the recipient of the 2019 Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest award for Fiction and the inaugural 2020 Furphy Literary Award, among others. Shortlisted for the 2023 Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award, her debut novel, Bright Objects, is forthcoming through Allen & Unwin (ANZ), Simon & Schuster (US), and Éditions Gallmeister (France).
