Nightjar Stories

By: Emily Ruskovich

Published by Random House, 2026-07-07

From the award-winning author of the national bestseller Idaho comes a stunning collection of stories that explore how unexpected intuitions forever alter the lives of ordinary people.

Five years after moving into the isolated house in rural Oregon where her husband lived as a child, the protagonist of “Victor’s Room” begins to doubt her husband’s account of his family’s past. In “Round Lake,” a young woman’s plans to meet a lover in Tokyo are upended when she learns a startling truth about her mother’s death. In “Owl,” winner of an O. Henry Award, a fur trapper reckons with the dreadful origins of his marriage after his wife is brutally injured by four adolescent boys.

Haunting and psychologically provocative, and set against the vivid backdrop of the Pacific Northwest, Nightjar illuminates the secret, instinctive knowledge that lies just under the surface of our awareness.