Excerpt from Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Vinyls were stacked on a stand. A royal flush of big band and jazz and calypso. Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman. The crooning of Vera Lynn and Dorothy Lamour. The brass of Atilla the Hun, Roaring Lion and Lord Invader. Songs about the poor, the heartbroken, the departed. About the American soldiers stationed in north Trinidad. And about all the local girls who loved them.

Marlee had no part to play in this invitation, though she was aware that many believed Dalton had done all of this for her. It rattled him how she couldn't bear children for him – and he had once called her as dry as the Atacama. But she believed it was the opposite – it was he who couldn't accomplish the deed. If he couldn't have his own children, he would treat others' children as his own, he'd said to her. Said that his mother told him it was the right thing to do. Marlee was greatly worried by this sentiment. If his sense of the right thing to do came from a possessed painting – then in actuality, there was no sense of the right thing to do. There was no sense at all! Recently, she'd wondered if the painting had commanded him to fire all of the house staff. Now she knew. Then again, had Dalton ever done anything to suggest he was sane?

She had begun to notice an odd habit he'd taken up with the children. He would come into the recreation room in the middle of the radio shows, hay sprouting from his boots, tracking mud on the herringbone tiles. Asked children their names, their parents' names, their birth dates. His face uncomfortably close to theirs, grinning and staring unblinkingly into their eyes. As if searching for their soul.

As if waiting for a sign.

Two weeks later, he told Marlee that he had looked into a boy's eyes and seen the devil. No firecrackers and tinderbox this time. He opened the nightstand drawer, got the Smith & Wesson. Came outside to the grounds, held the gun up to the sky, fired two bullets and screamed, Back to Hades with you! The children scattered, carrying the horror and confusion back to the village. A gate to hell has opened up, were his words while the gun was still smoking.

This singular act of psychosis was eventually chalked up to be a product of stress. That was the word many used to describe it. A few claimed that he fired the gun because a damn barrack child must've stolen something – and good for him! You give an inch, and they take a mile! But everyone could agree on one thing – the Changoors had a different type of blood running through their veins. Blue blood. They weren't like everyone else. The people of Bell had always questioned Dalton's wealth, though only in the form of idle gossip. The theories never ending. His money soaked and baptised in pure evil. Which evil – the dockyard drug lords, the contrabandistas beyond the Gulf, a bacoo spirit from the Burro Burro River down in Guyana – no one could say for sure. Two weeks back, his business was his business, nobody wanted to know.

But people always hummed a different tune when children were involved. Now, the villagers stood fastidious. United like a council. All faiths condemned the man. The Christians likened him to Judas Iscariot, who stole from the money box, long apostate before betraying Jesus. And the Hindus compared him to the Ayodhyan Prince that shot Shravan Kumar, a poor boy who he'd mistaken for an animal. Shravan had forgiven the prince before he died. They were told: Men like Dalton Changoor, in their hearts, believed that all those below him were animals. Dalton was no prince. He was just a man. And so, the devotees were asked: would you forgive a man for mistaking your child for an animal?

After that week, nobody wanted their children to have anything more to do with the Changoors. They would still nod at him. Still welcome him to hand out prizes at the Maypole. But his reputation was forever tarnished. Marlee felt deep shame to be the wife of a lunatic – to have his instability cast into the public eye. The nights of the week before he disappeared, he took long walks into the forest, lost himself gazing at the night sky. In the hours surrounding midnight, he sometimes walked to the front gate and into the road as if expecting visitors.

Excerpted from Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein. Copyright © 2023 by Kevin Jared Hosein. Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.