First published 2011
Chip Linton ditches his regional jet in Lake Champlain after both engines fail. Thirty-nine passengers die in the crash. Chip survives and moves with his wife Emily and their twin ten-year-old daughters to a Victorian house in northern New Hampshire. In the basement, they find a door sealed with thirty-nine carriage bolts. The number matches the death toll from Flight 1611. Emily grows suspicious of the local women who call themselves herbalists and show unusual interest in her fifth-grade daughters. She wonders if these village women pose a threat or if her husband has lost his sanity after the tragedy. The sealed door in their new home holds secrets that connect to both the crash and the strange behavior of their neighbors.
Genres: suspense, mystery, horror, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, suspenseful
Tropes: secrets, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Lake Champlain, New Hampshire
Period: 21st-century
378 pages · Hardcover · Crown
Content warnings: death