Enchanted Night

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Steven Millhauser returns with a magical novella imbued with the transforming power of the (almost) full moon.

"A hot summer night in southern Connecticut, tide going out and the moon still rising. Laura Engstrom, fourteen years old, sits up in bed and throws the covers off."

Others, too, are awakened by a chorus of night voices: Haverstraw, a thirty-nine-year-old failed writer living in his mother's attic; an old woman who lives alone; three teenage boys looking for trouble; a gang of girls who roam the night and break into houses; a lonely young man looking for love; a beautiful mannequin whose cold fiberglass arms begin to quicken; a group of restless children; and assorted dolls, toys, and animals long forgotten in an attic.

"This is the night of revelation. This is the night the dolls wake. This is the night of the dreamer in the attic. This is the night of the piper in the woods."

Only Steven Millhauser could transform our childhood legends of the night into a hypnotic adult tale of passionate enchantment, encounters of darkness and illumination, human passions and inhuman awakenings. Read it by the light of the moon.

Steven Millhauser is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Martin Dressler. He is the author of Edwin Mullhouse, Little Kingdoms, and The Knife Thrower, among other books.