Modern Day. Payne’s Hollow, a village on the shores of Lake Ontario.

We begin with a funeral. I already like it. Any book that starts with a funeral—especially a funeral where everybody agrees that the deceased was a giant pain is okely dokely with me. Even better, the reading of the will causes substantial problems for Samantha, the granddaughter of the recently deceased.

It seems Sam’s father confessed to murder over a decade ago and then killed himself. In the interim, her mother has fallen deeper into dementia. Sam dropped out of medical school and has been working double time to provide her mom with the necessary care.

Her grandfather, who just kicked the bucket, never believed his son was a murderer. To prove the point, the conditions of his will require Sam to stay one month on the property where the murder occurred. His belief is that she will come to realize that her father was innocent, though she has already made her peace with having a murderer as a father.

She hates Payne’s Hollow. It’s where she and her extended family, the Paynes for whom the place is named, spent summer vacations. It’s where she found her father digging a shallow grave. It’s where he confessed to murdering a 14-year-old boy, and it’s where her father killed himself as a result. She has repressed so many memories of that time, and she hates to allow her grandfather to control her from beyond the grave.

How much money would be enough to undergo this kind of emotional torture? A cool 10 million dollars, that’s how much.  I don’t know about you, but for me, that kind of moolah could result in some very unwise choices.

That’s about all I can tell you without ruining the lovely surprises (and by now you know that when I say lovely, I mean macabre, spooky, and occasionally gory).

Let me also drop the words headless horseman, zombies, curse, and ritual murder on you. There’s a little romance and a few twists and turns. I read much too late into the night and was appropriately spooked afterward. The result is a solid 5 for this well-written, suspenseful, and wonderfully creepy tale.

The Haunting of Paynes Hollow draws its power from the unsettling pull of The Moon and the shadowy grip of The Devil. The Moon cloaks Sam in distortion—half-remembered truths, haunted dreams, and secrets rising from the dark waters of her family’s past. But The Devil binds her there, chained by guilt, inheritance, and the fear that she may never break free of the darkness that destroyed her father. Together, these cards mirror the novel’s gothic heart: a journey through illusion and entrapment toward the terrifying truth.

Preorder below. This book will be released on October 14.