Emma Cline will be at Readers' Books on Wednesday, May 17th to present her second novel, "The Guest". There will be a reception at 5:30 p.m. and a reading at 6 p.m. The novel is a winning combination of biting social commentary and a tense literary page-turner. Alex, a young woman who has been staying with an older man in the East End of Long Island, makes a misstep at a dinner party and finds herself adrift among the wealthy residents. Through a combination of her wits and a loosening moral code, Alex moves from one place to the next, leaving havoc behind her. An anti-hero in the vein of the grifter Anna Delvey, Alex's complex relationships, both with men and with the truth, make for a fascinating character. The cracks in her facade, leading to inevitable disaster, make for a slow-motion car-crash, impossible to look away from. 

Emma Cline, the author of the acclaimed novel "The Girls" and the short story collection "Daddy", hails from Sonoma County.  "The Girls" was a finalist for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and was the winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. Cline's stories have been published in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review and The Best American Short Stories anthologies. She received an O’Henry Award and the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review, and was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists.