The debut of a major Australian writer, The Night Guest is a mesmerising novel about trust, love, dependence, and the fear that the things you think you know may become the things you're least sure about.

One morning Ruth wakes thinking a tiger has been in her seaside house. Later that day a formidable woman called Frida arrives, looking as if she's blown in from the sea. In fact she's come to care for Ruth.

Frida and the tiger: both are here to stay, and neither is what they seem. Which of them can Ruth trust? And as memories of her childhood in Fiji press upon her with increasing urgency, can she even trust herself?

'The Night Guest is such an accomplished and polished debut. A delicacy and poignancy to the writing is combined with almost unbearable suspense.' – Kate Atkinson, author of Life After Life

'I will be haunted by its beauty and its truths for along time to come . . . A rapturous, fearsome fable of grief and love.' – Susanna Moore, author of In the Cut

'Clear-sighted and compelling . . . and you love Ruth as you travel with her to the book's end.' – Ashley Hay, Weekend Australian

'An extraordinary novel. At once a tender thriller and an exquisitely constructed meditation on time and memory, it is propelled by sentence after sentence of masterful prose. With The Night Guest, Fiona McFarlane announces herself as a writer to be read, admired, and read again.' – Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds

'The best Australian first novel I've read in years. I so much admire the intelligence that animates it, and her calm sentences that contain surprises.' – Michelle de Kretser, winner of the 2013 Miles Franklin Award for Questions of Travel