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Vendor
Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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BENEATH THE STAIRS

Jennifer Fawcett

In this spine-tingling, atmospheric debut, a woman returns to her hometown after her childhood friend attempts suicide at a local haunted house, where a traumatic incident shattered their lives twenty years ago.
Few in Sumner's Mills have stumbled across the Octagon House, hidden deep in the woods. Even fewer are brave enough to go in. One summer, an emboldened fourteen-year-old Clare and her best friend, Abby, ventured into this haunted place. Clare came out, but a piece of Abby never did.

Twenty years later, an adult Clare receives word that Abby, who drifted from her life, has attempted suicide at the Octagon House and now lies in a coma. With little to lose and still grieving after a personal tragedy, Clare returns to her roots to uncover the darkness responsible for Abby's accident.

An eerie, enthralling page-turner, The Octagon House is about the trauma that follows us from childhood to adulthood. It's about returning to the beginning to reach the end.

Read before bedtime at your own risk...

Jennifer Fawcett grew up in rural Eastern Ontario and spent many years in Canada making theatre before coming to the US. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop. Her work has been published in Third Coast Magazine, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Storybrink, and in the anthology Long Story Short, published by Playwrights Canada Press. She teaches writing at Skidmore College and lives in upstate New York with her husband and son.
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Published 2022-02-22

Comments

Czech: Dobrovsky

A poignant haunted house tale about guilt, grief, and the nightmares of adolescence that follow us into adulthood. Fawcett delivers genuine scares in this chilling, mesmerizing debut.

A spell-binding horror story, where the terror comes not from ghosts, but from the haunted places we find within ourselves. A thoroughly engrossing and compulsive read.

An audacious debut... It'll keep you guessing until the very end.

Jennifer Fawcett's Beneath the Stairs had me from the very first page. Tense, surprising, and utterly gripping, I loved this book!

A novel brimming with menace and secrets, a haunting story of friendship and old betrayal that I devoured in one sitting. Fawcett delves into the complicated ties of teen girls against the backdrop of a small town and a strange house's sinister history. Atmospheric, cleverly constructed - the past meets the present in this gripping debut.

Fawcett's debut is both incredibly suspenseful and immersive. A word of caution to readers: leave the light on.

Are you always on the lookout for a rich, mystery-riddled haunted house novel for grown-ups? Me too. Jennifer Fawcett's Beneath the Stairs is that book. A thrilling, thoughtful, character-driven crucible that reveals the ways childhood fear clings to us, shapes us, but can also show the one way out of our adult darkness.

In Beneath the Stairs, Jennifer Fawcett explores the lasting impact of childhood trauma in this story about a house with buried secrets. An enthralling debut by a gifted storyteller!