by Sarah Langan
First published 2006
Susan Marley moves through Bedford's rain-soaked streets like a ghost. The former town beauty has become something else entirely, watching from doorways and alleyways while the Maine mill town crumbles around her. The paper mill has closed, leaving residents jobless and desperate. They spend their idle hours thinking about Susan, and she fills their dreams with violent nightmares that feel too real to ignore. Her mother and younger sister suffer in silence. Her ex-lover drowns his guilt in alcohol. The lucky ones pack up and leave Bedford behind. But those who remain, whether by choice or circumstance, face something far worse than economic collapse. Susan waits for something to happen, and the townspeople sense that whatever she's waiting for will destroy what little remains of their lives. The rain keeps falling, the downtown keeps rotting, and the nightmares grow stronger each night.
Genres: mystery, horror, contemporary, dark-fantasy
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, suspenseful
Tropes: supernatural-mystery, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Bedford, Maine
Period: contemporary
400 pages · ebook · HarperCollins Publishers
Content warnings: depression, mental-illness