Life Among the Terranauts

By: Caitlin Horrocks

Narrated by: Angèle Masters, Ann Marie Gideon, Caroline Slaughter, Casey Holloway, Jeanette Illidge, Joe Knezevich, Nicholas Tecosky, Suehyla El-Attar

From the author of the "enthralling" (New York Times Book Review) and "beautiful" (Washington Post) debut novel The Vexations comes an exciting new story collection that is "perfect for fans of George Saunders and Karen Russell" (Booklist), moving boldly between the real and the surreal

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice

Following her "marvelous" (Wall Street Journal) first novel, Caitlin Horrocks returns with a much-anticipated collection of short stories. In her signature, genre-defying style, she explodes our notions of what a story can do and where it can take us.

Life Among the Terranauts demonstrates all the inventiveness that won admirers for Horrocks’ first collection. In "The Sleep", reprinted in Best American Short Stories, residents of a town in the frigid Midwest decide to hibernate through the bitter winters. In the title story, half a dozen people move into an experimental biodome for a shot at a million dollars, if they can survive two years. And in "Sun City", published in The New Yorker, a young woman meets her grandmother’s roommate in the wake of her death and attempts to solve the mystery of whether the two women were lovers.

As the Boston Globe noted of her first collection, Horrocks is a master of "wild yet delicately handled satire", a "sprightly heartbreak" in which she is able to "mingle a note of tenderness in the desolation". With its startling range - from Norwegian trolls to Peruvian tour guides - Life Among the Terranauts once again dazzles readers, cementing Horrocks’ reputation as one of the premier young writers of our time.

©2021 Caitlin Horrocks (P)2021 Little, Brown & Company

Critic reviews

“Potent.... The slow violence of economic hardship and ecological degradation underpins each tale.” (The New Yorker)

“Life Among the Terranauts reinforces Caitlin Horrocks’s status as a maestro of short fiction...compiled of humorous and tenacious stories that serve as a reminder that the flyover states are rife with folklore and intrigue. The sense of place matches the sense of wonder, a perfect amalgamation of geography and plot.” (Aram Mrjoian, Chicago Review of Books)

"Genre-bending, hauntingly environmental.” (Entertainment Weekly)