Sinister, suspenseful, and satisfyingly eerie.
Handeland ventures into 1970s New England in his latest, weaving family turmoil into a sinister supernatural mystery. Fleeing her abusive, alcoholic husband, Thomas, Margaret Arnold takes her young son, Timmy, to her mother’s home in Nashua. But safety proves elusive when mother and son begin encountering disturbing apparitions, drawing Margaret toward a psychic medium, an unsolved disappearance, and secrets connected to Silver Lake.
Handeland grounds his supernatural tale in an intensely human struggle. Margaret’s determination to protect Timmy and build a life beyond her troubled marriage gives the novel an emotional urgency that makes the paranormal danger feel consequential. She is a sympathetic, resilient protagonist, balancing fear and uncertainty with the practical demands of motherhood, work, family, and an estranged husband who refuses to disappear quietly from her life. The novel is particularly effective when its haunting develops into an investigation. Timmy’s encounters with Mickey, unexplained cold spots, nightmares, and Margaret’s sightings of spectral figures steadily widens the mystery. Rather than presenting its ghosts as straightforward sources of menace, the story keeps their intentions uncertain. Psychic Aurora Greenfield adds intrigue, while Margaret’s newspaper research links the haunting to a decades-old tragedy, connecting supernatural horror with trauma and lingering violence.
The 1970s setting gives the novel a distinctive texture. Department stores, newspaper archives, local restaurants, modest family homes, and period details establish Margaret’s everyday world, while Nashua and its surrounding landscape provide an evocative backdrop for increasingly uncanny events. Silver Lake is especially well used, its seemingly peaceful beauty acquiring an ominous significance as Margaret’s investigation deepens. Handeland favors direct, cinematic storytelling, moving between domestic tension, ghostly encounters, investigative discoveries, and escalating danger. The dialogue occasionally spells out more than necessary, but Handeland’s accessible approach keeps the layered mystery moving at a steady clip. Margaret’s developing connection with Detective Andy McMullen provides a warmer counterpoint to the darker material without displacing the mother-son relationship at the story’s center. What gives the novel its strongest identity is the interplay between past and present. The paranormal mystery is not simply an excuse for frightening encounters; it becomes inseparable from Margaret’s attempt to understand danger, protect her child, and determine why the past has intruded on their lives. Handeland turns the familiar haunted-house premise outward, allowing its unease to follow the characters beyond the home and into ordinary spaces.
This chilling blend of domestic peril and spectral unease should appeal to fans of Stephen King’s The Shining and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.
Coming soon
ISBN 9798187507795