Thirty-Seven: A Novel

The Survivors, their members known only by the order in which they joined, live alone in a rural Colorado mansion. They believe that sickness bears honesty, and that honesty bears change. Fueled by the ritualized Cytoxan treatments that leave them on the verge of death, they instigate the Day of Gifts, a day that spells shocking violence and the group’s demise.Enter Mason Hues, formerly known as Thirty-Seven, the group’s final member and the only one both alive and free. Eighteen years old and living in a spartan apartment after his release from a year of intensive mental health counseling, he takes a job at a thrift shop and expects to while away his days as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. But when his enigmatic boss Talley learns his secret, she comes to believe that there is still hope in the Survivor philosophy. She pushes Mason to start the group over again―this time with himself as One.Part Fight Club, part The Girls, and entirely unlike anything you’ve ever experienced, Peter Stenson’s Thirty-Seven is an audacious and austere novel that explores our need to belong. Our need to be loved. Our need to believe in something greater than ourselves, and ultimately our capacity for self-delusion.

start a little Survivors cult of my own." -Shelf Stalker

"Stenson has a knack for creating characters who are on the verge...I definitely haven’t read anything like this in the genre, or even at all. This book may be a bit unclassifiable―it slants toward the horror aesthetic, but why put it in a box? I want to put this one in everyone’s hands

About the Author

Peter Stenson received his MFA from Colorado State University in 2012. His first novel, Fiend, was an Amazon Best Book of the Month for July 2013. His stories and essays have been published in The Bellevue Literary Review, The Greensboro Review, Confrontation, Blue Mesa Review, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife and daughter in Denver, Colorado.

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