New Release – How to Fake a Haunting by Christa Carmen
Synopsis
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.
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Praise
“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
“Christa Carmen joins the eerie echelon of Catriona Ward and Silvia Moreno-Garcia as one of the reigning queens of modern gothic. How to Fake a Haunting forgoes the fog and centuries-old castles for something far more frightening: the beguiling black mold insinuating itself within contemporary homelife. The gloom and ghouls may be prefab, but the ghosts lingering within this toxically haunted house are real all the same.” ―Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
“Carmen is at the top of her game with this bewitching page-turner that pulls you in through its endearing characters, slowly creeps open, and finally rips you apart in a harrowing climax.” ―Kate Maruyama, author of The Collective and Bleak Houses
About the Author
Christa Carmen lives in Rhode Island. She is the Bram Stoker Award- winning and two-time Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of The Daughters of Block Island, Beneath the Poet’s House, and the forthcoming How to Fake a Haunting, as well as the Indie Horror Book Award-winning Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked , the Bram Stoker Award-nominated “Through the Looking Glass and Straight into Hell” ( Orphans of Bliss: Tales of Addiction Horror ), and co-editor of the Aurealis Award-nominated We Are Providence and the Australiasian Shadow Award-nominated Monsters in the Mills. She has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA from Boston College, and an MFA from the University of Southern Maine.
When she’s not writing, she keeps chickens; uses a Ouija board to ghost-hug her dear, departed beagle; and sets out on adventures with her husband, daughter, and bloodhound–golden retriever mix. 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.
