WHEN GHOSTS CALL US HOME

Inspired by The Haunting of Hill House and Marisha Pessl's Night Film, WHEN GHOSTS CALL US HOME by Katya de Becerra is a YA horror mystery that will appeal to readers who also enjoyed Rules for Vanishing, The Girls are Never Gone, and The Dead House.

When Sophia Galich was twelve, she starred in her older sister Layla's amateur horror movie Vermillion, which recorded raw footage of her very real reactions to scenes her sister concocted in the old California house on the coast that their parents were spending the summer restoring. In the years following Vermillion's release, Sophia's relationship with her eccentric wunderkind sister grew strained, while her memories of living in the infamous Cashore House, which doubled as the set of Vermillion, continued to fuel her nightmares. But while Vermillion amassed an army of fanatical admirers who speculated about the film's hidden messages, it was rumored that Layla made a pact with the devil, her soul in exchange for fame and arcane knowledge. Sophia and her parents always dismissed this as mere speculation... until Layla disappeared.

After Layla vanishes from her locked dormitory room in unsettling circumstances, Sophia studies a trail of clues Layla left behind. Sophia decides to team up with the acclaimed director Erasmus Sawyer to spend her summer re-enacting the film. Sophia lies to her parents and forges their signatures on the release forms so that she can find her way back to Cashore House in the hopes of learning what really happened to Layla. She's determined to follow every clue because while most of the world has given up her sister for dead, Sophia is positive that she's still alive and that the answers about her disappearance are all at Cashore House.

But back at the Cashore for the first time since her sister's disappearance, Sophia starts to remember new details about her experiences on the set of Vermillion - impossible things. Together with the director's son, Arthur Sawyer, who works on the set, Sophia investigates, but she is starting to suspect that Vermillion might've been more than just a series of clever special effects. As she gets closer and closer to Cashore House's haunted heart, Sophia must once again confront the terrible entity she first battled as a child. But Sophia is not a scared kid anymore. She's older and braver and she has Arthur by her side. She's ready to fight the monster that consumed her childhood and she's determined to save her sister from the house's ghostly clutches... unless the house consumes her first.

Katya de Becerra is the author of genre-bending young adult fiction. Critics called her debut What The Woods Keep (Imprint/2018) "a thoughtful and compelling horror fantasy" (The Bulletin) and "a narrative that will keep readers enthralled" (Booklist), while her second novel Oasis (Imprint 2020) earned a starred review from Booklist. Born in Russia, Katya studied in California and now lives in Melbourne with her husband. After earning a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Melbourne, Katya spent the last ten years as a lecturer and a scholar researching technologies & inequalities in education.