The strange and explosive new collection from the incomparable imagination of Samanta Schweblin, a master of the short story.

A gripping blend of the raw, the astonishing and the tragic, every story is as perfectly unexpected as a snare: tightly, exquisitely wound, ready to snap at a touch.

Here, a young father is haunted by the consequences of a moment of distraction; tragedy is complicated by the inexplicable appearance of an injured horse; an attempted poisoning leads two writers to startling conclusions; a lonely woman’s charity is rewarded with home-invasion. And in the shocking opening story, a mother surfaces from the depths of the lake behind her house, where she saw something awful yet alluring.

Guilt, grief and relationships severed permeate this mesmerizing collection – but so do unspeakable bonds of family, love and longing, each sinister and beautiful. Step by step these unnerving stories lure us into the shadows to confront the monsters of everyday life – ourselves.

‘No one writes like Samanta Schweblin’ – Lorrie Moore, author of I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home

A blazing new story collection that will make you feel like the house is collapsing in on you, from the three-time International Booker Prize finalist, ‘lead[ing] a vanguard of Latin American writers forging their own 21st-century canon.’ –O, the Oprah magazine

Cross the threshold of these seven empty houses and enter the dark, destabilising world of Samanta Schweblin. Here, homes are not a place of safety. A person is missing, or a truth, or memory; some rooms are enticing, some unmoored, others empty. And in these tense, visionary tales,  something always creeps back in: a ghost, a fight, trespassers, a list of things to do before you die, or the fallibility of parents.

Seven Empty Houses  offers an entry point into a fiercely original mind.  In each story, the twists and turns will unnerve and surprise: Schweblin never takes the expected path and instead digs under the skin and reveals uncomfortable truths about our sense of home, of belonging, and of the fragility of our connections with others.  This is a masterwork from one of our most brilliant modern writers.