Book Description
*An instant USA Today bestseller*
For fans of Tár and The Piano Teacher, this gruesome and unsettling psychological drama is a darkly lucid portrait of a classical composer’s descent into madness.
As the last and greatest student of famed minimalist composer Ryder Wakefield, Mia Voss has long been assured a rise to prominence in the insular world of classical music. When Ryder dies unexpectedly, she inherits everything–including the unfinished manuscript of his final composition, the mysterious Death Fugue: Music for Orchestra.
Haunted by memories of her tragic romance with Ryder’s late son, Oliver―like Mia, an Asian American adoptee―Mia leaves her girlfriend behind and returns to Ryder’s home to finish his last work. While there to untangle her complex relationship with Ryder, who hid his Jewish and gay identities to become one of the most important twentieth-century American composers, Mia must also contend with her lingering guilt over Oliver’s suicide and her own musical ambition as the manuscript begins to exert a disturbing, mesmerizing hold over her.
Drawn from the author’s own experiences as an adoptee and classical musician, The Minimalist is a harrowing examination of loss, torment, mental illness, self-harm, and artistic disintegration.
About the Author
Kailee Pedersen writes haunted, unsettling speculative fiction. She graduated with a BA in classics from Columbia University, specializing in ancient Greek. Kailee was adopted from Nanning, China and grew up in Nebraska, where her family owns a farm. She is the author of the queer poetry chapbook Pastorale and the novel Sacrificial Animals, which was named one of the New York Public Library's Best Books of 2024 and a finalist for Best Horror at the 2025 Libby Book Awards. When not scribbling down her next book, you can catch her studying opera performance at the Mozarteum University, playing video games, or working as a software engineer in New York City. The Minimalist is her second novel.
Reviews
*Autostraddle, Most Anticipated Queer Books for August 2026*
"A highly original, excruciatingly discomfiting tale about a young composer’s descent into madness... Readers will feel the obsessive horror of this tightly wound novel throughout their bodies... One of this season's standout horror novels." ―Library Journal, starred review
"Like the minimalist compositions that made Ryder famous, this disturbing exploration of identity, genius, and madness will not appeal to everyone, but it rewards close attention and resonates long after striking its final chord. Strong-nerved readers will be intoxicated." ―Publishers Weekly
"Spine-chilling."―Bookriot
"A harrowing journey into madness...The suspense created by Mia’s personal demons is readily and easily identifiable to anyone who has battled mental health issues and who has fought back against their own struggles." ―BookTrib
"An atmospheric slow burn with a heady, intricate structure... It’s a mesmerizing and brilliant example of grief horror that will continue to echo within me long after its last note." ―Macabre Daily
"I could write that the heady and harrowing The Minimalist is a gothic meditation on the personal and intrapersonal wages and politics of artistic obsession and ambition, equal parts hallucinatory fever dream, bildungsroman, and social critique. I could also write that Kailee Pedersen and her mesmerizing The Minimalist doesn't f*ck around." ―Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie and A Head Full of Ghosts
"Kailee Pedersen is the Bach of the macabre. The Minimalist is an absolutely haunting chamber piece of psychological horror, an aural gothic tuned to obsessive perfection, where every note climbs up your spine and crescendos in your head. You can nearly hear her chilling symphony rise up from the page." ―Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
"Written with a sinister, Nabokovian sumptuousness, this gothic tale of music, doomed love and madness only further cements Kailee Pedersen as one of the best and most original writers of her generation. " ―Dan Chaon, author of One of Us
“A memorable mix of stylistic verve, high drama, insider knowledge, and imaginative power.” ―Alex Landragin, author of Crossings
