Excerpt from Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Katyush," Max said. "Please. They're gone. The search isn't useful anymore."

Max, of all people, announcing what was or wasn't useful. Katya shifted her fingers on his leg and he fell silent.

They stooped under her open trunk door to change into their bathing suits. Away from the fire, they had goose bumps. Their breath fogged. Katya adjusted her shoulder strap and Max grabbed her. He backed her up until her legs hit the car. They kissed for a long time under the metal canopy, where neither of them had room to stand up straight. They bent into each other like two praying hands, but Katya wasn't thinking of God. She forgot lost children. She was thinking of Max, his arms, his fingers, his mouth, his fine teeth, the urgency under her skin.

Eventually she had to pull away. She was in her bikini and rubber sandals, and the cold had numbed her feet. Max, in his briefs and old sneakers, shone in the dark.

He crossed his arms on his chest. "So where are we going?" he asked.

The hot springs were calling—hissing, bubbling. "Come on," she said and led him away from camp, along the stream, on a narrow path through the trees until they came to the clearing that held the baths.

Five rubber-and-wood structures, aboveground pools fed by hoses from steaming wells. The rotten-egg smell of the springs was thick here. Warm mud slid under their feet. Katya and Max left their shoes at the base of one bath's stairs and climbed in. The heat dragged up their bodies. Katya exhaled into the swirling air. "Heaven," Max said, and she sank next to him in the sulfuric water to her chin.

The steam unwound. Above them were a million tiny stars. The night was blue and black, outlined by autumn constellations, and Katya, staring up, found a satellite blinking its way across the sky. The longer she watched, the deeper the heat reached inside her. It bled into her organs. It cleared her mind.

Near him, she couldn't think of anything but him. But when they were a little apart she returned to herself, and she liked that woman she came back to. Someone ... capable. Someone who maintained standards, who met commitments, who produced results. Someone who would be disappointed in a man who acted the way Max so often did. She should be disappointed with him.

Max slid through the water toward her. His skin was slick from dissolved minerals. Against her back, the wooden edge of the pool was slippery. He tucked his fingers into her bathing suit bottom, and she stiffened, holding on to that bit of her own brain.

"Not here," she said.

"Then where?" he said in her ear.

"In the tent," she whispered back.

He pulled away.

That had come out meaner than she meant. "I'm joking," she said. Now he was far away from her.

"Huh," he said, his voice separated from his body by a wall of steam.

"It was a joke."

"Funny."

"Don't—" she started, and then stopped. Should she apologize? Try to explain? If he made mistakes, though, he had to accept the consequences. She, too, should accept the truth in front of her: what had propelled her into a weekend's liaison in August wasn't enough to sustain a relationship through the fall. Let alone beyond. The snake slithered up her throat. Max could not handle responsibility. Each of them would be happier in the long run with anybody else.

Between them, heat puffed. The water hissed and trickled.

Back at the car, they changed into dry clothes, stepped into sleeping bags, and hopped into their seats: Katya in the driver's, Max in the passenger's. Both of them already sweating from the effort. It was going to be a miserable night. She peeled off her long-sleeved shirt. "Should we buckle ourselves in?" she asked, turning to him, smiling, but above his sleeping bag, his shoulders were still high and offended.

This was their romantic trip. She leaned across the gearshift and he pecked her on the lips. "Night," he said.

Excerpted from Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips. Copyright © 2019 by Julia Phillips. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.