Sara Van Os + Rachel Harrison: Decomposition Book

Joining Sara in conversation is New York Times bestselling author Rachel Harrison. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd-floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.

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ACCESSIBILITY:

Strand Book Store is an ADA-compliant venue. The event space is accessible via elevator.

ASL interpretation is available for this event by request only. Please reach out to our events team at [email protected] by May 7 to request.

Please ask a Strand employee upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred.

For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact [email protected]

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Yellowjackets meets Ghost in this electrifying debut about a woman who wakes up in the woods next to a corpse and a pile of journals. The more she reads the personal entries, the harder it is to let go—of both the body and its ghost.

Ava thought the great tragedy of her life would be getting stuck in a dead-end office job, especially after she dropped $250K she didn’t have on a master’s degree in Classical Vocal Performance a decade ago. But reality looks even grimmer than student loan repayments and watery office coffee when she gets lost on an ill-fated hike with two of her coworkers.

Meanwhile, Savannah has been cowering in her parents’ lake house in upstate New York for weeks, barely coping after a traumatic falling out with her mercurial best friend. Her days blend together in a hazy swirl of clinically concerning overthinking and alcohol—until she chases her nightly bottle of wine with an Ambien and wakes up in the woods behind her house...next to a dead body.

Unfortunately, Savannah is so down bad that this well-preserved corpse offers some compelling friend potential: after all, a dead person can’t judge you; they’re amazing listeners; and they’re not going to leave. This particular dead person also comes with a handy journal detailing her last six months lost in the woods!

Without much else going on, Savannah decides to cozy up to this mysterious new friend prospect (she can always call the police later…). As Savannah spends more time with both the Ava in front of her and the Ava of the journal, she realizes she feels closer to Ava than anyone else—and may not be able to let her go.

Decomposition Book is part queer love story, part survival tale with an exhilarating and irreverent Gen-Z voice that blurs the line between the supernatural and the psychological with intoxicating verve.

Photo credit: Elizabeth Van Os

Sara van Os is a Mexican-American decomposition nerd who lives in Harlem with her wife and two cats. She has a bachelor’s degree from NYU in English and German and a minor in Clarinet Performance, because she loves a good side quest. Since college, she has been working in hospitality as everyone’s favorite manager and lives to gather stories of weird happenings at work. Decomposition Book is her debut novel.

Photo credit: Nicholas Harris

Rachel Harrison is the New York Times bestselling author of Play Nice, So Thirsty, Black Sheep, Such Sharp Teeth, Cackle, and The Return, which was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and in her debut collection Bad Dolls. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and their cat/overlord.

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