An Arrangement of Light

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Hailed by the New York Times as "one of America's most important novelists," Nicole Krauss (The History of Love, Great House) is considered by many to be among the most ambitious and distinctive writers of our time. Krauss's chilling new short story released today by Byliner, An Arrangement of Light, is clear evidence of her gifts.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120827/LA62967)

Narrated by the personal secretary to a world-famous landscape architect, it is a tale about how survival of the fittest, whether for flora or fauna, beast or man, is often a guarantee of treachery, and how, in the end, our loyalties can become as trapping as any prison.

Set in an unnamed country as familiar as it is otherworldly, the story begins with a young horticulturist's admiration for the work of a great man and his hope to help build the new public park in the capital. He ends up securing far more than that: a complicity with the park's celebrated designer he could never have imagined or wished for. And when a military coup ushers capricious generals into power and they arrive in their black sedans with dark plans for the park, the personal secretary discovers that dreams risk running headlong into nightmares. Ultimately he must reckon with the fact that nature, for all its beauty, is cruel and conniving, and that a good gardener cannot tame it, only bend its neck.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nicole Krauss is the author of the international bestsellers Great House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and The History of Love. Her first novel, Man Walks into a Room, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. She was selected as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists in 2007 and by the New Yorker for its "Twenty Under Forty" list. Her fiction has been published in the New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, and Best American Short Stories, and her books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages.

ABOUT BYLINER: Byliner publishes compelling works of original fiction and nonfiction written to be read in a single sitting. Among its bestselling titles are Amy Tan's Rules for Virgins, Ann Patchett's The Getaway Car, Jon Krakauer's Three Cups of Deceit, Elizabeth Kaye's Lifeboat No. 8, and Nick Hornby's Everyone's Reading Bastard. The companion website, Byliner.com, features curated archives of great fiction and nonfiction writing and allows readers to easily find, share, and buy new and classic stories by their favorite authors.

An Arrangement of Light is available for $1.99 as a Kindle Single at Amazon, a Quick Read at Apple's iBookstore, a NOOK Snap at BN.com, and at Kobo.

SOURCE Byliner