Bedbugs
A Novel of Infestation
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3.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
FOR RENT: Top two floors of beautifully renovated brownstone, 1300 sq. ft., 2BR 2BA, eat-in kitchen, one block to parks and playgrounds. No broker’s fee.
Susan and Alex Wendt have found their dream apartment.
Sure, the landlady is a little eccentric. And the elderly handyman drops some cryptic remarks about the basement. But the rent is so low, it’s too good to pass up.
Big mistake. Susan soon discovers that her new home is crawling with bedbugs . . . or is it? She awakens every morning with fresh bites, but neither Alex nor their daughter Emma has a single welt. An exterminator searches the property and turns up nothing. The landlady insists her building is clean. Susan fears she’s going mad—until a more sinister explanation presents itself: she may literally be confronting the bedbug problem from Hell.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The man behind Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters returns with an original novel set in New York's Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, a tony enclave of young families, high-end strollers, and fancy cookware (in Winters's mind if not exactly in reality). The Wendts infrequent artist Susan, husband Alex, and daughter Emma newcomers to New York City, move into a suspiciously cheap apartment as a nearby mother rolls her twins off the roof, sparking a general turn to the creepy. Susan gradually becomes isolated as she encounters a "massive" stranger staring from the shadows of the yard, a noise of uncertain origin, a suicide close to home, and mysteries surrounding the apartment's last tenants. Increasingly troubling events culminate in a case of bedbugs that is demonic in scope. By turns gruesome and compelling, fueled by a slow-burn tension, and full of in-jokes about contemporary Brooklyn culture, Winters's breezy summer read will leave readers compulsively scratching.
