Starter House
A Novel
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Promising talent Sonja Condit makes her debut with Starter House, an eerie and mesmerizing tale about a young couple whose new house holds deadly secrets from the past, sure to appeal to fans of Heart-Shaped Box and The Thirteenth Tale.
From the moment Lacey sees the house with the beautiful wood staircase, she knows she’s found her dream home. Growing up rootless with her flighty mother, Ella Dane, a self-proclaimed psychic, Lacey is determined to give her unborn baby the stability she never had.
But shortly after she and her husband, Eric, move in, the warm and welcoming house becomes cold and dark. There is something malevolent within these walls that wants to hurt her unborn child—a terrifying presence that only she can sense. And there is Drew, a demanding and temperamental little boy who mysteriously appears when Lacey is alone.
To protect her unborn child and save her family, Lacy must discover the truth about her dream house and the troubled Drew—a decades-old mystery involving secrets, violence, and guilt—and confront an evil that has lingered in wait for years.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This stylish debut novel from Condit employs a supernatural horror element that drives the main conflict. Lacey Miszlak, a pregnant fourth-grade schoolteacher, and her husband, Eric, a divorce attorney at his uncle's law firm, are searching for their dream "starter house" in Greeneburg, a fictitious city in South Carolina. Lacey falls in love with a Cape Cod being fixed up for sale by a man who lives next door, Harry Rakoczy, who cuts the Miszlaks a good deal. After the Miszlaks move in, Lacey collides with a rambunctious nine-year-old boy riding his bicycle; he introduces himself as Drew. After Lacey's doctor puts her on bed rest, Eric summons her mother, Ella Dane Kendall, a freewheeling herbalist, to help. Lacey makes the perturbing discovery that she lives in what the locals call the "murder house" that "eats babies," while also beginning to suspect that Drew, whom she has befriended, is a ghost. Meanwhile, Eric represents Lex Hall, whose wife Jeanne is divorcing him and taking their one-year-old daughter, Theo. Lacey's fears over her and Eric's safety escalate when Drew's destructive force damages the upstairs. She learns the truth from Drew about what happened where she lives before her baby is born there. Eric connects Lex to the troubled house and Drew, before Condit's entertaining debut novel shifts into high gear for the violent showdown.
