by Peter Straub
First published 2004
Timothy Underhill receives devastating news. His sister-in-law has taken her own life without warning or explanation. One week later, her teenage son Mark disappears from their small town. The police suspect a pedophilic killer who has been targeting local children, but Underhill sees a different pattern. Mark had become fixated on an abandoned house in the neighborhood, spending hours studying its dark windows and overgrown yard. Underhill begins his own investigation into both the house and his nephew's vanishing. The building holds decades of terrible secrets, and Underhill suspects that Mark discovered something he should never have seen. As the horror novelist digs deeper into the house's past, he uncovers a history of violence and tragedy that spans generations. The search for Mark becomes a race against time, with Underhill fighting to save his nephew from whatever evil lurks within those crumbling walls.
Genres: suspense, mystery, horror, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, suspenseful
Tropes: mystery, race-against-time, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Small Town
474 pages · Hardcover · Thorndike Press
Content warnings: suicide