Stephen Chbosky presents IMAGINARY FRIEND: A NOVEL at Brattle Theatre

Harvard Book Store welcomes STEPHEN CHBOSKY—the beloved, bestselling author of Perks of Being a Wallflower—for a discussion of his highly anticipated second novel, Imaginary Friend.

About Imaginary Friend

We can swallow our fear or let our fear swallow us.

Single mother Kate Reese is on the run. Determined to improve life for her and her son, she flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night with Christopher at her side. Together, they find themselves drawn to the tight-knit community of Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. It’s as far off the beaten track as they can get. Just one highway in, one highway out.

At first, it seems like the perfect place to finally settle down. Then Christopher vanishes. For six awful days, no one can find him. Until Christopher emerges from the woods at the edge of town, unharmed but not unchanged. He returns with a voice in his head only he can hear, with a mission only he can complete: Build a tree house in the woods by Christmas, or his mother and everyone in the town will never be the same again.

Soon Kate and Christopher find themselves in the fight of their lives, caught in the middle of a war playing out between good and evil, with their small town as the battleground.

Praise for Imaginary Friend

“If you aren’t blown away by the first fifty pages of Imaginary Friend, you need to get your sense of wonder checked.” ―Joe Hill, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman andNOS4A2

“Imaginary Friend has been a long time coming. And like a fine Bordeaux, it rewards that wait in countless ways. This is a fearsome, remarkably ambitious novel that breaks through the boundaries of the horror genre to become epic—in all the best senses of the word.” ―Lincoln Child, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Verses for the Dead and City of Endless Night

“Like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Imaginary Friend says that no matter how dark the places you have been or the things you have seen, no one and nothing and nowhere is beyond redemption. What is astonishing and laugh-out-loud genius is that Chbosky has disguised all this wisdom in an entertaining thriller. In true Stephen Chbosky style, he gives you the bran and the doughnut. Spiritual enlightenment and horror. I don’t know how he did it. But he did it. It’s a masterpiece.” ―Emma Watson, actor and activist