Margot Livesey is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Flight of Gemma Hardy, The House on Fortune Street, Banishing Verona, Eva Moves the Furniture, The Missing World, Criminals, and Homework. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Vogue, and the Atlantic, and is the recipient of grants from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Livesey is a professor of fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her latest book is Mercury: A Novel (Harper). Donald, an optometrist in suburban Boston, is sure that he and his wife, Viv, who runs the local stables, are both devoted to their two children and to each other. Then Mercury—a gorgeous young thoroughbred with a murky past—arrives at Windy Hill. Everyone is struck by Mercury’s beauty and prowess, particularly Viv. Her daydreams soon morph into consuming desire, and her infatuation with the thoroughbred escalates to obsession. Donald is slow to notice how profoundly Viv has changed and how these changes threaten their quiet, secure world. By the time he does, it is too late to stop the catastrophic collision of Viv’s ambitions and his own myopia.
