The Invention of Everything Else is a luminous imagining of an unlikely friendship between the eccentric inventor, Nikola Tesla, and a young hotel chambermaid, Louisa, who is obsessed with radio dramas and the secret lives of the hotel guests. Louisa first catches sight of the hotel’s most famous resident on New Year’s Day, 1943, and is determined to befriend the strange man. As they share their mutual affinity for pigeons, Louisa begins to piece together Tesla’s extraordinary story of life as an immigrant and visionary genius. Meanwhile, faced with her father’s imminent departure in a time machine, as well as the unsettling arrival of Arthur, a mysterious mechanic (perhaps from the future), Louisa begins to suspect that she has understood something about the relationship of love and invention that Tesla, for all his brilliance, never did.
Samantha Hunt is an author whose novel about Nikola Tesla, The Invention of Everything Else, was a finalist for the Orange Prize and winner of the Bard Fiction Prize. Her first novel, The Seas, earned her selection as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35.” Her novel, Mr. Splitfoot, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Paris Review Staff Pick. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, McSweeney’s, Tin House, A Public Space, and many other publications.
Marguerite Gavin is a seasoned theater veteran, a five-time nominee for the prestigious Audie Award, and the winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones and Publishers Weekly awards. She has been an actor, director, and audiobook narrator for her entire professional career. With over four hundred titles to her credit, her narration spans nearly every genre, from nonfiction to mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and children’s fiction. AudioFile magazine says, “Marguerite Gavin...has a sonorous voice, rich and full of emotion.”