A Prayer for the Dying (Signed & Slipcased Limited Edition) HOT

Lividian Publications is proud to be publishing a deluxe signed, numbered, and slipcased Limited Edition hardcover of A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O’Nan. This special edition has been lavishly crafted with collectors and readers alike in mind. François Vaillancourt provided stunning color artwork for the dust jacket and frontispiece, plus ten black and white illustrations for the interior, making this a true work of art. As a special bonus, “Good Man Mad” by Patrick McGrath is included as an afterword.

Retail Price: $125

Publication Date: January 2025

Page Count: 216 pages

• Full-color wrap-around artwork by François Vaillancourt

• Full-color frontispiece by François Vaillancourt

• Ten interior black and white illustrations by François Vaillancourt

• “Good Man Mad” by Patrick McGrath (afterword)

• Includes numbered collectible bookmark

• Offset printed on an acid-free archival quality paper stock

• A fine cloth binding

• Hot foil stamping on the front cover and spine

• Smyth-sewn to create a more durable binding

• Twine head and tail bands

• High-quality endpapers

• Sewn-in satin ribbon page marker

• Custom-made slipcase stamped with hot foil and featuring a unique die-cut window

• Signed by Stewart O’Nan and François Vaillancourt

• Limited to 600 signed and numbered copies

Dark, poetic, and chilling, A Prayer for the Dying asks if it’s possible to be a good man in a time of madness.

Set in leafy Friendship, Wisconsin, just after the Civil War, A Prayer for the Dying opens harmlessly on a languid summer day; only slowly do events reveal themselves as sinister, bloom gently into a shared nightmare, as one neighbor after another succumbs to a creeping, always fatal disease. Our sole witness to this epidemic is Jacob Hansen, Friendship’s sheriff, undertaker, and pastor, a man with a large heart and conscience.

As the disease engulfs his town, breeding hysteria, Jacob must find a humane way to save those he loves, short of calling up a full quarantine and boarding up the sick in their houses. And what of the tramps slipping nightly through the tinder dry woods, and the spiritualists on the edge of town with their charismatic leaders, Chase. Who will bury the dead properly, if not Jacob?

A Prayer for the Dying is a rare and scary book, Stewart O’Nan’s most astounding achievement yet, a sunlit Gothic painted in shimmering prose that darkens and disturbs your complacency the further you go into it until – as in the best Poe and Flannery O’Connor – there is no going back.

From Publishers Weekly (Starred Review):

“O’Nan does a superb job of establishing the faint sense of menace that grows into a horrifying nightmare of random destruction and death. Outside of a few red-herring details, the narrative moves with surefooted technique into the realm of sinister gothic mystery. Profoundly unsettling, it requires a leap of faith from the reader that may, like Jacob’s faith, fail at times, but it is a mesmerizing story and a brilliant tour de force. Author tour.”

From Booklist (Starred Review):

“A sad ending does not detract from the novel’s effectiveness as a sharp, taut study of the goodness of the human heart in the face of the darkness that life can present. It’s an amazing novel, at once highly realistic yet at the same time poetically metaphoric. O’Nan’s readership grows with each book, and his fans will find this one his best to date.”

From Kirkus:

“…an extremely moving portrayal of faith and grief all the same.”

Stewart O’Nan’s award-winning fiction includes Snow Angels, Last Night at the Lobster, and Emily, Alone. Granta named him one of America’s Best Young Novelists. He lives in Pittsburgh.