Chris Bohjalian

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About Chris Bohjalian
Chris Bohjalian is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 23 books. His work has been translated into 35 languages and three times become movies.
His forthcoming novel, "The Lioness," arrives May 10, 2022.
His most recent novel, "Hour of the Witch," was published in May 2021 and was an instant New York Times, Publishers Weekly, USA Today and Indiebound bestseller. It's a novel of historical suspense set in 1662 Boston, a tale of the first divorce in North America for domestic violence -- and a subsequent witch trial. The Washington Post called "historical fiction at its best. The New York Times called it "harrowing."
His 2018 novel, “The Flight Attendant,” debuted as a New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and National Indiebound Bestseller. It is now an an HBO Max series, starring Kaley Cuoco that has been nominated for numerous Emmy, SAG, and Golden Globe awards. It was recently renewed for a second season.
His 2020 novel, “The Red Lotus,” is now in paperback. It's a twisting story of love and deceit: an American man vanishes on a rural road in Vietnam and his girlfriend, an emergency room doctor trained to ask questions, follows a path that leads her home to the very hospital where they met. Publishers Weekly called it “a diabolical plot reminiscent of a Robin Cook thriller,” and Booklist described it as “masterful…a cerebral and dramatic dive into what happens when love turns to agony.”
He is also a playwright and screenwriter. He has adapted his novel, “Midwives,” for a play, which premiered in 2020 at the George Street Playhouse, and was directed by David Saint. Broadway World said of it, “The fine playwriting by Bohjalian, the directorial talents of the Playhouse’s Artistic Director, David Saint, and the show’s accomplished cast make this play unforgettable.”
His first play, “Grounded,” premiered at the 59 East 59th Theatres in New York City in the summer of 2018 and is now available as an audiobook and eBook, “Wingspan.”
His books have been chosen as Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Hartford Courant, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Bookpage, and Salon.
His awards include the Walter Cerf Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts; the ANCA Freedom Award for his work educating Americans about the Armenian Genocide; the ANCA Arts and Letters Award for The Sandcastle Girls, as well as the Saint Mesrob Mashdots Medal; the New England Society Book Award for The Night Strangers; the New England Book Award; Russia’s Soglasie (Concord) Award for The Sandcastle Girls; a Boston Public Library Literary Light; a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Trans-Sister Radio; a Best Lifestyle Column for “Idyll Banter” from the Vermont Press Association; and the Anahid Literary Award. His novel, Midwives,was a number one New York Times bestseller, a selection of Oprah’s Book Club, and a New England Booksellers Association Discovery pick. He is a Fellow of the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He has written for a wide variety of magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, Reader’s Digest, and The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine. He was a weekly columnist in Vermont for The Burlington Free Press from 1992 through 2015.
Chris graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude from Amherst College. He has been awarded Honorary Degrees as well from Amherst, Champlain College, and Castleton University.
He lives in Vermont with his wife, the photographer Victoria Blewer.
Their daughter, Grace Experience, is a young actor in New York City. Among the audiobooks she has narrated are Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands, The Guest Room, and Hour of the Witch.
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Books By Chris Bohjalian
Cassandra Bowden is no stranger to hungover mornings. She's a binge drinker, her job with the airline making it easy to find adventure, and the occasional blackouts seem to be inevitable. She lives with them, and the accompanying self-loathing. When she awakes in a Dubai hotel room, she tries to piece the previous night back together, counting the minutes until she has to catch her crew shuttle to the airport. She quietly slides out of bed, careful not to aggravate her already pounding head, and looks at the man she spent the night with. She sees his dark hair. His utter stillness. And blood, a slick, still wet pool on the crisp white sheets.
Afraid to call the police—she's a single woman alone in a hotel room far from home—Cassie begins to lie. She lies as she joins the other flight attendants and pilots in the van. She lies on the way to Paris as she works the first class cabin. She lies to the FBI agents in New York who meet her at the gate. Soon it's too late to come clean-or face the truth about what really happened back in Dubai. Could she have killed him? If not, who did?
Set amid the captivating world of those whose lives unfold at forty thousand feet, The Flight Attendant unveils a spellbinding story of memory, of the giddy pleasures of alcohol and the devastating consequences of addiction, and of murder far from home.
Look for Chris Bohjalian's new novel, The Lioness!
Tortured by the cryptic finality of that short utterance, Reverend Drew feels his faith in God slipping away as he tries to unearth the truth behind Alice's death. Only new arrival Heather Laurent -- the enigmatic author of wildly successful books about angels -- seems able to save him from slipping into the depths of despair.
Heather has her own story. She survived a childhood that culminated in her own parents' murder-suicide, so she identifies deeply with Alice's daughter, Katie, offering herself as a mentor to the girl and a shoulder for Stephen. But then the state's attorney begins to suspect that Alice's husband may not have killed himself . . . and finds out that Alice had secrets only her minister knew.
Related through the eyes of four different narrators, Secrets of Edenis both a haunting literary thriller and a deeply evocative testament to the inner complexities that mark all of our lives. Once again, Chris Bohjalian has given us a riveting page-turner in which nothing is precisely what it seems.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of The Flight Attendant, here is a novel that examines wildly divisive American issues like gun control and animal rights with Chris Bohjalian’s trademark emotional heft and spellbinding storytelling skill.
For ten summers, the Seton family—all three generations—met at their country home in New England to spend a week together playing tennis, badminton, and golf, and savoring gin and tonics on the wraparound porch to celebrate the end of the season. In the eleventh summer, everything changed. A hunting rifle with a single cartridge left in the chamber wound up in exactly the wrong hands at exactly the wrong time, and led to a nightmarish accident that put to the test the values that unite the family—and the convictions that just may pull it apart.
When Kristin Chapman agrees to let her husband, Richard, host his brother's bachelor party, she expects a certain amount of debauchery. She takes their young daughter to Manhattan for the evening, leaving her Westchester home to the men and their hired entertainment. What she does not expect is that the entertainment—two scared young women brought there by force—will kill their captors and drive off into the night.
With their house now a crime scene, Kristin's and Richard’s life spirals into nightmare. Kristin is unable to forgive her husband for his lapses in judgement, or for the moment he shared with a dark-haired girl in the guest room. But for the dark-haired girl, Alexandra, the danger is just beginning.
One woman's journey into her family's past reveals a shocking story that has never been told.
1915, Aleppo, Syria.When Elizabeth Endicott steps off the boat from Boston, armed only with a crash course in nursing, nothing could have prepared her for the atrocities she is about to face. For Aleppo is the arrival point for the hundreds of thousands of Armenians who have been forced to march out of Turkey and through the desert to die.
There Elizabeth gets to know Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter in the Genocide. When Armen travels to Egypt to join the British army, he begins to write to Elizabeth, and slowly realizes that, unless he can find his way back to her, he risks becoming lost forever.
Present day, New York.Laura Petrosian has never really given her Armenian heritage much thought until an old friend calls, claiming to have seen a photo of Laura's grandmother advertising a museum exhibition. As Laura embarks on a journey back through her family's history she'll find a tale of love, loss - and the hidden story of a nation in mourning.
'Chris Bohjalian is at his very finest in this searing story of love and war. I was mesmerized from page one. Bravo!' Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife
'The Sandcastle Girlsis deft, layered, eye-opening, and riveting. I was deeply moved." Wally Lamb, author of The Hour I First Believed
'Powerful . . . Bohjalian's storytelling makes this a beautiful, frightening, and unforgettable read' Publishers' Weekly
Among the group is 18-year-old Anna Emmerich, the daughter of Prussian aristocrats. There is her lover, Callum Finnella, a young Scottish prisoner of war who has been brought from the stalag to her family's farm as forced labour. And there is the intriguing Wehrmacht corporal whom the pair know as Manfred - who is, in reality, Uri Singer, a Jew from Germany who managed a daring escape from a train bound for Auschwitz.
As they work their way west, they encounter a countryside ravaged by war. Their flight will test both Anna's and Callum's love, as well as their friendship with Manfred - assuming any of them even survive. Skilfully capturing the flesh and blood of history, Bohjalian has crafted a rich tapestry that puts a face on one of the 20th century's greatest tragedies - while creating a masterpiece that will haunt readers for generations.
The home's new owners are Chip and Emily Linton and their twin daughters. Chip was an an airline pilot until he was forced to crash land on a remote lake the jet he was flying after double engine failure. Thirty-nine people aboard Flight 1611 died that day - a coincidence not lost on Chip when he discovers the number of bolts in that basement door . . .
Meanwhile, his wife is increasingly troubled about the women in this sparsely populated village, self-proclaimed 'herbalists'. Why do they seem excessively interested in her young daughters. Emily is terrified, too, that her husband's grip on sanity seems to have become increasingly tenuous, in the wake of the devastating plane accident.
When one of homeopath Carissa Lake's patients falls into an allergy-induced coma, possibly due to her prescribed remedy, Leland Fowler's office starts investigating the case.
But Leland is also one of Carissa's patients, and he is begining to realize that he has fallen in love with her. As love and legal obligations collide, Leland comes face-to-face with an ethical dilemma of enormous proportions. Graceful, intelligent, and suspenseful, The Law of Similars is a powerful examination of the links between hope and hubris, love and deception.
When Laurel Estabrook is attacked while riding her bicycle through Vermont’s back roads, her life is forever changed. Formerly outgoing, Laurel withdraws into her photography, spending all her free time at a homeless shelter. There she meets Bobbie Crocker, a man with a history of mental illness and a box of photographs that he won’t let anyone see. When Bobbie dies, Laurel discovers a deeply hidden secret–a story that leads her far from her old life, and into a cat-and-mouse game with pursuers who claim they want to save her.
In a tale that travels between the Roaring Twenties and the twenty-first century, between Jay Gatsby’s Long Island and rural New England, bestselling author Chris Bohjalian has written an extraordinary novel.
Cassandra Bowden conoce bien las mañanas de resaca. Le gusta tomarse unas copas de vez en cuando y su trabajo en la aerolínea le facilita encontrar nuevas aventuras, así que tener lagunas de memoria parece inevitable| convive con ellas, y también con el sentimiento de culpabilidad que conllevan.
Cuando se despierta en la habitación de un hotel de Dubái, intenta reconstruir lo que pasó la noche anterior mientras espera para tomar el transporte que la llevará al aeropuerto. Se desliza fuera de la cama sigilosamente, tratando de no empeorar su ya intenso dolor de cabeza, y observa al hombre con el que ha pasado la noche. Contempla su pelo oscuro, su calma absoluta... y sangre, un charco de sangre todavía húmeda sobre las sábanas blancas.
Temerosa de llamar a la policía, Cassie empieza a mentir. Miente al unirse al resto de sus compañeros en la furgoneta| miente durante el vuelo a París, en el que se ocupa de la cabina de clase preferente| miente a los agentes del FBI en Nueva York, que la esperan a su llegada. Pronto será demasiado tarde para confesar la verdad, o para enfrentarse a lo que realmente pasó en Dubái.
¿Pudo haberlo matado? Y si no fue ella, ¿quién lo hizo?
Months later they traded in their co-op in Brooklyn for a century-old Victorian house in Lincoln, Vermont (population 975), and Bohjalian began chronicling life in that town in a wide variety of magazine essays and in his newspaper column, "Idyll Banter."
These pieces, written weekly for twelve years and collected here for the first time, serve as a diary of both this writer's life and how America has been transformed in the last decade. Rich with idiosyncratic universals that come with being a parent, a child, and a spouse, Chris Bohjalian's personal observations are a reflection of our own common experience.
"Chris Bohjalian is a terrific columnist—thoughtful and thought-provoking. Just like me! No, really, this guy is good." —Dave Barry, author of Boogers Are My Beat
“The best book I’ve ever read about life in a contemporary village. There’s no doubt that Chris Bohjalian has established himself as one of America’s finest, most thoughtful, and most humane writers.”
—Howard Frank Mosher