About
Matthew Sullivan (he/him) is the author of the novel Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, which was an IndieNext pick, a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, a GoodReads Choice Award finalist, and winner of the Colorado Book Award. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Daily Beast, The Spokesman-Review, Sou'wester and elsewhere, and his stories have been awarded the Florida Review Editor's Prize and the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize. He grew up in a family of eight raucous kids in Aurora, Colorado, and received his B.A. from the University of San Francisco and his M.F.A. from the University of Idaho. After working as a bookseller at Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver and at Brookline Booksmith in Boston, he spent 20 years as a tenured instructor teaching writing, literature and film at a rural HSI community college in the high desert of central Washington State. He is married to a librarian, Libby, and now lives in Anacortes, WA, along the Salish Sea. His new stand-alone novel, Midnight in Soap Lake, is forthcoming from Harper Collins/Hanover Square Press.
Featured Work
Midnight in Soap Lake
A lake with mysterious properties. A town haunted by urban legend. Two women whose lives intersect in terrifying ways. Welcome to Soap Lake, a town to rival Twin Peaks and Stephen King’s Castle Rock.
When Abigail agreed to move to Soap Lake, Washington, for her husband’s research, she expected old-growth forests and craft beer, folksy neighbors and the world’s largest lava lamp. Instead, after her husband jets off to Poland for a research trip, she finds herself alone, in a town surrounded by sand and haunted by its own urban legends.
But when a young boy runs through the desert into Abigail’s arms, her life becomes entwined with his and the questions surrounding the death of his mother, Esme. In Abigail’s search for answers, she enlists the help of a recovering addict turned librarian, a grieving brother, a broken motel owner and a mentally shattered conspiracy theorist to unearth Esme’s tragic past, the town’s violent history and the secret magic locked in the lake her husband was sent there to study.
As she gets closer to the answers, past and present crimes begin to collide, and Abigail finds herself gaining the unwelcome attention of the town’s unofficial mascot, the rubber-suited orchard stalker known as TreeTop, a specter who seems to be lurking in every dark shadow and around every shady corner.
A sweeping, decade-spanning mystery brimming with quirky characters and puzzle-hunt scenarios, Midnight in Soap Lake is a modern-day Twin Peaks—a rich, expansive universe that readers will enter and never forget.
Other Works
-
Midnight at the Bright ideas Bookstore
2017
Awards and Recognition
- • An IndieBound Indie Next pick and Indie Bookstore Bestseller. • A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. • Winner of the Colorado Book Award, General Fiction. • Goodreads' Debut Author of the Month and Choice Award for Debut Novel, Final Round • A Library-Reads pick. • Tattered Cover Book Store's Very Impressive Book pick. • SUSPENSE Magazine's Best Books of the Year Award, Debut Novel • Seattle Public Library's Top Ten Novels of the Year • Reader's Advisory Board/ALA Year's Best Genre Fiction, Mystery, shortlist.