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by Christa Carmen
A desperate woman's plot to frighten her husband out of her life takes a nightmarish turn in a chilling novel of modern horror by a Bram Stoker Award–winning author.
Lainey Taylor is being pushed to the brink by her alcoholic husband, Callum. Prone to hallucinations and erratic behavior, it's only a matter of time before he puts Lainey's life―and that of their daughter, Beatrix―in jeopardy. A divorce and full custody is out of the question. In Callum's words: Over my dead body.
Lainey's sympathetic friend Adelaide has a wild solution. They'll stage a haunting so convincing it will drive Callum out of Lainey's life for good. Nothing too over the top: strange smells, noises in the walls, and flies unleashed along the windowsills. It could work. Considering Callum's alcohol-induced night terrors, he's already close to broken. With each new scare, Lainey is closer to seeing the haunting through to its bitter, freeing end.
But in a house filled with so much rage, resentment, and fear, is it any wonder that Lainey and Adelaide's plan goes horribly wrong? As their fake haunting spirals into something no one can control, Lainey discovers that the only way out of this frightening trap is to join forces with Callum, or die trying.
"Christa Carmen delivers the goods in this twisty, clever domestic horror novel that Rachel Harrison fans will love! A twenty-first-century Amityville, haunted by marital strife and the meddling best friend we all need. Now I want the film version of this, immediately!" ―Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of The Night Birds and Road of Bones
"How to Fake a Haunting is a poignant, frightening, and utterly original story about the ghosts that haunt families and the homes they create. By turns darkly funny, emotionally devastating, and memorably chilling, this book twists the horror genre in ways I never saw coming." ―Tracy Sierra, author of Nightwatching
This information about How to Fake a Haunting was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Christa Carmen is the author of Beneath the Poet's House; The Daughters of Block Island, winner of the Bram Stoker Award and a Shirley Jackson Award finalist; Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked, an Indie Horror Book Award winner; and numerous short stories, including the Bram Stoker Award–nominated "Through the Looking Glass and Straight into Hell." She has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA from Boston College, and an MFA from the University of Southern Maine. Christa lives in Rhode Island with her husband, daughter, and bloodhound–golden retriever mix. When she's not writing, Christa keeps chickens and uses a Ouija board to ghost-hug her dear, departed beagle. Most of her work comes from gazing upon the ghosts of the past or else into the dark corners of nature, those places where whorls of bark become owl eyes, and deer step through tunnels of hanging leaves and creeping briars only to disappear. For more information, visit www.christacarmen.com.
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