The Glass Hotel

Powell's Picks of the Month

Hot new releases and under-the-radar gems for adults and kids.

A novel of the financial collapse but so much more. A wonderful, mysterious book where characters' actions ripple out, affecting others in unintended ways, and people are haunted by the memories of those long gone. Peopled by characters who long to become something else, but struggle with the aftermath of change. Fantastically written literary noir. Recommended By Bill L., Powells.com

Ambitious and inventive, with a circuitous plot that demands the reader's full attention and rewards it handsomely, The Glass Hotel is a dizzying, beautiful book. I wasn’t sure what to expect going in — Mandel won my blind allegiance with Station Eleven, so I jumped at the chance to read her latest, without much concern for the details — but in hindsight, I’m grateful for that blank slate. Watching this story unfold was a thrill. Recommended By Tove H., Powells.com

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
THE NEW YORKER - NPR - TIME - THE WASHINGTON POST- ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY - FORTUNE - GLAMOUR - ELLE - THE AV CLUB - REAL SIMPLE - LITHUB - PARADE - THE BBC - THRILLIST - BOOKPAGE - ELECTRIC LITERATURE - GOOD HOUSEKEEPING - INSIDER - THE ECONOMIST - NEW YORK POST - THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events — a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby's glass wall: Why don't you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients' accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan's wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.

In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.

"Unerringly graceful....A striking book that's every bit as powerful — and timely — as its predecessor....A masterpiece." NPR

"The perfect novel....Freshly mysterious." The Washington Post

"Flawlessly constructed." The Boston Globe

"Heartbreakingly resonant." San Francisco Chronicle

"Compulsively readable." Chicago Review of Books

"Lyrical, hypnotic." The Wall Street Journal

"A careful, damning study of the forms of disaster humanity brings down on itself." Vulture

"A beguiling tale about skewed morals, reckless lives and necessary means of escape." The Economist

"A wondrously entertaining novel." Slate

"A master in her prime...a marvel of intricacy from beginning to end." Entertainment Weekly

"Mandel's gift is to weave realism out of extremity. She plants her flag where the ordinary and the astonishing meet....She is our bard of waking up in the wrong time line." The New Yorker

"Richly satisfying....Deeply imagined, philosophically profound." The Atlantic

Emily St. John Mandel's four previous novels include Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award and has been translated into thirty-two languages. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.