Adam Ross (author)

Adam Ross (born February 15, 1967, New York) is an American novelist and short story writer. His debut novel, Mr. Peanut, was also named a 2010 New York Times Notable Book, as well as one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New Republic, and The Economist. It has been translated into 16 languages. His story collection, Ladies and Gentlemen, was included in Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2011.

Ross was born and raised in New York City and attended the Trinity School, where he was a state champion wrestler. A child actor, he appeared in movies (The Seduction of Joe Tynan), numerous commercials and television shows, as well as radio dramas such as The Eternal Light and E.G. Marshall’s Mystery Theater.

Mr. Peanut, published by Knopf in 2010, was reviewed by Scott Turow on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, who called the novel “the debut of a prodigiously talented writer…a brilliant, powerful, memorable book.” In her review of the novel, the New York Times’ Michiko Kakutani described it as, “Dark, dazzling…The debut of an enormously talented writer,” and called Ross “a literary gymnast [and] a sorcerer with words.” Mr. Peanut tells the story of a video game designer, David Pepin, who is suspected of murdering his wife, Alice. He is interrogated by two detectives, Ward Hastroll (an anagram for Rear Window’s killer Lars Thorwald) and Sam Sheppard, of the infamous Dr. Sam Sheppard murder case. The novel is structured like a Mobius strip and combines the work of M.C. Escher, Alfred Hitchcock, and true crime wherein the reader is challenged to ascertain which events are real and which are guilty projections of the novel’s characters.

Ross’s story collection, Ladies and Gentlemen, was published in 2011.

His nonfiction has been published in The New York Times Book Review, The Daily Beast, The Wall Street Journal, and The Nashville Scene. His fiction has appeared in The Carolina Quarterly and FiveChapters.