Kept

James Scott has published short fiction in American literary reviews and journals, including Ploughshares, One Story, American Short Fiction and Post Road, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best New American Voices. He writes for the music magazine Under the Radar, is an issue editor at One Story, and teaches at Grub Street in Boston. The Kept is his first novel and has been longlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. He lives in western Massachusetts, America.

"A classily written crime novel that is also an atmospheric evocation of a bygone era." The Sunday Times "Darkly beautiful... The Kept is a rare blend of brutality and empathy, emotion and close observation. I thought at times of Cormac McCarthy's work and of the novels of David Vann. At other times it brought to mind Stef Penney's The Tenderness Of Wolves and Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain. But there's something wonderfully distinctive about The Kept... A literary page-turner of the highest calibre by a writer of serious talent." -- Jonathan Lee, author of JOY "Mysterious and compelling... James Scott has written a riveting and memorable debut novel." -- Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers "With its vivid sense of time and place, lyrical writing, and complex questions of what constitutes a family, The Kept is an outstanding debut by a bright new voice in fiction." -- Ron Rash, author of Serena and The Cove "Winter and discontent... Scott is the master of mood... Haunting'" New York Times Book Review