"Play, With Knives is a work of wondrous imagination—a dream from which I did not want to awaken." —Elizabeth Gilbert,  #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love "With dynamic prose and inventive plotlines,  Play, With Knives  cuts through readers' expectations, bringing them to the dazzling stage of the theater and through the backstage corridors of ambition and heartbreak." — Booklist   A struggling theater troupe tours the Midwest by surreal train—where aspects of their plays come to life and wreak havoc—in this inventive literary novel.   Edgar Cosentino can't stand lies. A talented painter, he's hired as the set designer for a struggling theater troupe touring the Midwest by train. Within its eccentric cast, he finds happiness in his budding relationship with actress Ava Vale, but Ava soon realizes his revulsion for lying has accidentally trapped her with a secret—she's technically married. All the while, playwright Fallon Finn-Dorset watches this drama unfold and incorporates aspects into her plays. But strange things happen on the train—the troupe is accompanied by a partly tame fox and a barman resembling Abraham Lincoln, and random elements of Fallon's writings magically come to life. Lies blur with truth, and fiction populates reality in ways that have dangerous consequences for Edgar, Ava, and others. Can their stories be rewritten to save the relationship as well as the future of the troupe? Play, With Knives is a highly inventive novel—surreal and poetic, yet full of lighthearted humor—about the morality of art, the subjectivity of truth and reality, and the magic of the written word. " Play, With Knives is a work of wondrous imagination—a dream from which I did not want to awaken." —Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love "With dynamic prose and inventive plotlines, Play, With Knives cuts through readers' expectations, bringing them to the dazzling stage of the theater and through the backstage corridors of ambition and heartbreak." — Booklist "I love and admire the pulsing vitality of Play, With Knives . Horn's formal ingenuity and her exquisite prose—so precise, lyrical, rhythmically adept—make this book a delight to be inside of." —Chris Bachelder, author of The Throwback Special , finalist for the 2016 National Book Award "What a wild ride! Jeanette Horn's new novel is part stage play, part novel, part freak out. ... Have a seat in the bar car and get ready for the show. Unforgettable!" —Christian Kiefer, author of The Heart of It All " Play, With Knives is rare and dangerous, a novel so honed it slices as it sings." —Joanna Ruocco, author of Dan "Jeanette Horn's prose is as sharp and unexpected as a paper cut." —Alia Volz, author of Home Baked , finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award " Play, With Knives is beautifully written, poetic—and surreal, in the inimitable way that life itself can be surreal." —Anja Snellman, author of Skin and Continents: A Love Story, the most widely read author of her generation in her native Finland "With lyrical sensibility, coy humor, and a Nabokovian sense of lexical gamesmanship, Horn gives us riveting plays within plays about the stakes of artmaking and the lives that we venture to live when we are prepared to risk it all—on the page as well as off it." —Debora Kuan, author of Women on the Moon , Lunch Portraits , and Xing "Play, With Knives is a terrific debut by a seriously talented writer." —Jared Stanley, author of So Tough Jeanette Horn holds an MFA from The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she received a Maytag Fellowship. Her poetry has appeared in MARGIE, POETRY INTERNATIONAL, STAND, and other literary journals. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and dogs. Learn more at www.jeanettehorn.com.