WHAT THE DEAD WANT

For fans of Asylum, a gripping teen novel about a New York City girl who inherits a haunted house in the country... and a deadly mystery along with it.

16-year-old Gretchen takes photographs to understand the world around her, a passion her mother Mona fostered and encouraged when she was still around. Since her mom disappeared years ago, Gretchen and her dad have lived on their own in New York City, haunted by Mona’s absence.

When Gretchen’s great aunt Esther calls unexpectedly to tell her that she has inherited the pre-Civil War mansion on her mother’s side of the family in upstate New York, Gretchen understands nothing except that her aunt needs her help. But what she finds there is beyond her imagination. The house is crumbling apart, filled with stacks of papers and journals from decades, even centuries past, and it is crawling with rodents. It is also full of secrets and a legacy of racism and violence so reprehensible that the ghosts of the past are exacting revenge on the living.

Somehow the mystery of Mona’s disappearance and the atrocities that happened on the land during the Civil War are inextricably intertwined, and it is up to Gretchen to figure out how...before even more lives are lost.

Norah Olson is the author of Twisted Fate, and a former journalist who covered criminal cases for a regional New York newspaper. She was educated in New England and lives in Manhattan.