THE SEPTEMBER HOUSE

This is a horror novel for people who don't know they love this genre - yet - and features a woman who lives in a haunted house.

A person can get used to pretty much anything.
That's what Margaret tells herself when her walls start to drip blood every September. It's going to stop again soon, and in the meantime, you just look away from the disfigured apparitions who appear. It's disconcerting when they point silently at the basement - do not go down there. But who wouldn't ignore them when it's your dream house, a massive Victorian you couldn't otherwise afford. But Hal, Margaret's husband, never did learn to live with it, and maybe that's why he left.

Now, Margaret's daughter, Katherine, has arrived to look for her missing father, convinced something grim has happened. She's never been to the house before and doesn't seem to see the ghosts, but she's still so explosively angry after an ugly breakup with her girlfriend that she isn't really looking. Margaret is trying her best to keep Katherine out of harm's way, avoiding that one dead boy with razor-sharp teeth and wiping blood from the walls. But Katherine is determined to uncover the truth.

With every desperate attempt Katherine makes at finding her father, the hauntings at September House grow more harrowing. The greatest threat of all is Master Vale, a wiry, domineering creature out of your worst nightmares. He's yet to show his face this September. But it's only a matter of days now. Katherine must be out of the house before he comes... and time is running out.

THE SEPTEMBER HOUSE is the compulsively, relentlessly readable debut from Carissa Orlando, a psychologist specializing in work with troubled children and survivors of trauma. She's crafted such a believable character in Margaret that you will find yourself nodding along to her entirely reasonable explanations. Until suddenly you're not nodding anymore. Oh - and that part near the end when think you have it all figured out? Keep reading...

Carissa Orlando has her doctorate in clinical-community psychology and specializes in work with children and adolescents. Her professional writing credits include publications in the areas of suicide prevention, treatment of depression, and implementation of school-based mental health care for youth. In her "day job," Carissa works to improve the quality of and access to mental health care for children and their families.
Prior to her career in psychology, Carissa studied creative writing in college and has written in some form or another since she was a child. An avid horror fan for much of her life, it was only a matter of time before Carissa merged her understanding of the human psyche, experience working with individuals who have survived chronic trauma, and deep love for storytelling into a piece of fiction.