Bliss House: A Novel
After the explosion at her St. Louis home—leaving her husband dead and her 14-year-old daughter, Ariel, disfigured—Rainey Adams wants a fresh start. So she buys Bliss House, her ancestral, nineteenth-century Virginia country home, despite its murderous reputation. Here Rainey feels she’s come home, while Ariel senses her father’s presence and sees her healing accelerating. But the aftermath of a gala housewarming party shatters the sense of well-being: during the night, Ariel sees a ghostly woman take a deadly fall, and in the morning Rainey finds the body of her real-estate agent in the hallway. A near-lethal assault and a related murder follow, as Ariel explores the house and becomes more affected by it. Woven through this narration is the generation-old story of a woman’s imprisonment in a secluded underground chamber of the house, a stunning account that a member of the Bliss family finally feels compelled to reveal to Rainey. Benedict combines the supernatural with the all-too-real, peopling the haunted-house milieu with psychopaths and adding elements of guilt and betrayal for an engrossing and suspenseful read. --Michele Leber