Star Witness: A Story in Seven Parts (Electric Literature's Recommended Reading Book 274)

4.1/5 ( ratings)

In seven parts, “Star Witness” tells the story of Shelley, a sheltered but intrepid young woman living in a small southern town. When a local girl goes missing, Shelley spends the night searching. With enchanting illustrations by Alix Pentecost Farren, “Star Witness” is nostalgic and dreamy, but it’s also suspenseful and unnerving. The serialized novel was all the rage in Charles Dickens’s day. You may have heard tell of people crowding the dock, waiting for the latest installment of Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop, desperate to find out the fate of little Nell. Clearly, the way we consume the written word has changed since then. But we haven’t stopped appreciating the thrill of finding out what happens next. Whether we’re glued to Eleven’s flight from Hawkins Lab or the unfurling eccentricities of John McLemore, our addiction to the anticipation and satisfaction of serial storytelling lives on. “Star Witness” combines the tension of Stranger Things with the visual and narrative beauty of a classic illustrated adventure like Alice in Wonderland. The result is an adult storybook for the internet age.

About the Author: Joe Meno is a fiction writer who lives in Chicago. He is the winner of the Nelson Algren Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Great Lakes Book Award and was a finalist for the Story Prize. The bestselling author of seven novels, including Hairstyles of the Damned and The Boy Detective Fails, he is a professor at Columbia College Chicago in the Creative Writing Department. His latest novel is Marvel and a Wonder.

About the Illustrator: Alix Pentecost-Farren is an illustrator, cartoonist and artist. Her work has included stationery design, mud murals, animations, and installations. She went to school for art and design at the North Carolina School of the Arts and then studied illustration and filmmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design before moving to Brooklyn, NY. Her clients include Thrillist, McDonalds, Rising Stars Magazine, Josh Garrels, Margaret Glaspy/ATO Records, Mason Jar Music Films, and more. Her work has been awarded the Communication Arts Award of Excellence, shown in multiple galleries in New York and abroad, published by Martha Stewart Magazine, Harlequin Creature and Keep This Bag Away From Children, and exhibited at Rhode Island Independent Publishing Expo and the Society of Illustrators Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival.

About Electric Literature: Electric Literature is a literary nonprofit with the mission to expand the influence of literature in popular culture by fostering lively and innovative literary conversations and making exceptional writing accessible to new audiences. Our weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, pairs the best contemporary fiction with personal recommendations from top writers and editors.