The Woman of the House - Couverture rigide

Mooney, Kate

Couverture rigide

ISBN 13 : 9798217189885

Editeur : Berkley, 2026

Synopsis

A terrifying, twisty, and impossible-to-put-down supernatural thriller that reminds us that houses are never just houses—and secrets never stay buried.

Rose Crawley isn’t the perfect wife—or the perfect woman—that her husband thinks she is. And she isn’t about to let him find that out, ever. She’s finally gotten everything she’s ever wanted: a house by the lake, an adoring husband, and a fresh start from the past she’s long tried to outrun.

But the house she now calls home seems to have other plans. She wakes with bloody scratches lining her arms. She sees reflections in mirrors, only to find she’s standing alone.  She hears the floors creak under invisible footsteps. And when Rose lies awake in the dark, the air feels heavy, like the house is pressing in on her, waiting for her to crack.

When Rose learns that the previous occupant, a wife and mother named Angela, vanished under suspicious circumstances, she becomes obsessed with uncovering what happened. Drawn deeper into the disappearance by her peculiar and prying neighbor, Rose digs into Angela’s past. But the more she discovers, and as the house's strange occurrences escalate, Rose finds herself questioning not just what happened to Angela, but whether she’ll share the same fate.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Kate Mooney is an award-winning advertising copywriter who has had the privilege of writing for brands like BMW, HP, Cottonelle, and Fiat. Kate currently lives in Chicago with her husband, son, and daughter.

Extrait. © Reproduit sur autorisation. Tous droits réservés.

1

underwater, time stops. Or maybe it stretches. It doesn't matter. Clouds shift in the sky as lake water fills my lungs. When I close my eyes, I see a woman. The muscles in my arms and legs go slack. A black hole-her mouth-opens. A smile that looks a lot like a lie twists across her face.

As I sink deeper into the icy gray water, the image of our house fades. Before we moved in, I had been drawn to the house. It tugged at the lonely place inside me, reeling me in like a fish on a hook. I thought that feeling was fate, but that was before I realized fate was as good a liar as I am.

Seaweed wraps its arms around me as my skin goes numb and my vision fades. Now, there's nothing left for me to do but drown.

2

Three Months Earlier

rose!" Brian calls from the house.

"Be right there!" I yell from the window of the boathouse before returning to the half-opened box at my feet.

The boathouse smells like neglect. A quarter inch of pollen mixed with dust sits on the windowsills. The screens are black with the same mixture. An old wooden dresser and two wicker chairs are in the corner, long forgotten by the previous owners. I collapse into one of the chairs. Tiny pieces of splintered wood scratch at the backs of my thighs. There's plenty for me to unpack in the house, but I pull an unknown box toward me and untangle the flaps of cardboard, feeling the rush of adrenaline from going through someone else's things. The spike is short-lived. More dusty life jackets. My stomach tingles as I look up at all the unopened boxes stacked against the wall.

Our Realtor, Sonja, told us a family had lived here before us. With red lipstick smudged on her two front teeth, she explained how they were the ones responsible for the beautiful remodel. From what I can tell from the half-packed boxes in the boathouse, they left in a hurry and couldn't be bothered with whatever remained. Maybe they didn't need life jackets where they were going.

I rip open another box with the word keep scribbled across the top in black Sharpie. This one is full of plastic buckets and shovels. Beach toys and disappointment.

I know I should go help Brian, but peering into someone else's life is more interesting than living in your own. The thrill of emotional trespassing forces me to push the two opened boxes aside and pull a third toward me. It's heavy and promising.

Soon, I'm elbow-deep in mud-covered ropes, rusted fishing hooks, and other boating accessories I can't place. Just as I'm wondering what boat all this equipment belongs to, my fingers find a folded piece of paper wedged at the bottom. When I pull it out, I see it's not paper but a photo of a man and a young boy. The man is dressed in fishing trousers. The boy, who doesn't look older than five, is wearing a miniature version of the same outfit. Their faces are full of bright optimism as they each hold a fishing line. Something similar to guilt gathers in my stomach. If this day meant enough to document with a picture, then how did it find its way to the bottom of a mold-covered box left in the back of a boathouse?

I open the back door to let some fresh air in. The balcony is big enough for one, but if it's anything like the condition of the boathouse, I don't trust it. There's a rocky shore below and a pier that juts out into the water, but no boat. Not even a dinghy. When we toured the house, Sonja never said anything about a boat. A boathouse with no boat. I remember looking at Brian to have a conversation with our eyes about the irony, but his glance never met mine. It wasn't that funny anyway.

A buzzing from my back pocket interrupts my prying hands. I check my phone. The number isn't saved, but I know who it is. I stand still with my arm frozen midair, as if the person on the other end can see me. If I don't move, maybe they'll go away. Maybe they'll forget about me altogether. The buzzing stops and I let out a sigh of relief, but then my phone buzzes again. This one is more final. It's a voicemail and a reminder that the caller is still there, just on the other end of the line, waiting for me. I delete the message without listening to it.

I hoist the boxes back to their place against the wall before I walk up the hill toward our new home, which looks down on the small lake town. Houses just like ours surround the lake on all sides, hovering over the water, keeping it in its place. According to Sonja, most of the permanent residents who live in Lake Moss don't live by the lake at all. They live about a mile away from the shore and survive on the tourism from the summer season. I drove through that side of town when I made a wrong turn on my way to the grocery store the other day. Ranch homes with carports instead of garages lined the street while chain-link fences separated the properties. A dog, some sort of pit bull mix, was tied to a makeshift porch and barked as I drove by. Farther down the road, a woman yelled at her three kids to get inside. Even though her hair was tied back in a ponytail, untamed wisps stuck out all around her face. When I passed, I saw that her eyes were wild with something more than just frustration. It was a look I knew all too well. After a right turn and a quick left, I was at the grocery store, where the sun seemed to shine a little brighter.

Blades of grass flatten beneath my feet. Somewhere out on the lake, a boat engine revs. Besides that, it's silent. The deafening quiet is something Brian says I'll get used to. It's worse at night. After living in Chicago all my life, I'm used to sirens, bar fights, and shattering glass putting me to sleep. Here, our closest neighbors are an acre away, and most of them don't even live here full-time. "Seasonal" is what the locals call them. They're only here during the summer or the occasional winter weekend. As I walk up the lawn, I can make out the side of the neighbor's house. It isn't refurbished like ours; it was built new from the ground up. According to Brian, it has two more bedrooms and one and a half more baths than our three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath home. When he mentioned that fact the other day, he pretended like he didn't care that the neighbor's house was bigger than ours, but from the twitch of his eyebrow, I could tell it lit up every competitive cell in his body.

Compared to our neighbor's house, ours was a steal. At least that's what Brian had said when he first showed it to me online. We weren't looking for a new house, or at least I didn't know we were looking for one, but once I stepped inside during the tour, I began to understand what Brian had been going on about during the hour-long drive it took to get here. The house wasn't the biggest on the lake, not by a long shot, but when we walked in it felt familiar and foreign all at once. It wasn't like I knew the house, but like the house knew me.

The foyer has a large staircase that goes right up the middle of it. The kitchen and living room are an "open floor plan," a term I hadn't heard until Sonja said it when she gave us the tour.

"Open floor plans are all the rage these days," Sonja had said with all ten of her fingers splayed out in the air in front of her. "You should have seen how many walls were in here before the remodel."

Sonja was in her mid-sixties and couldn't have been more than five feet tall without heels on, but what she lacked in height her voice made up for in enthusiasm. Her tweed skirt and matching blazer rubbed together in all the wrong places, making a scratching noise as she led us around the house, smiling as if it belonged to her.

"The main bedroom is down the hall to the left, and there's two smaller bedrooms to the right," she said as she looked between me and Brian. "I'll let you two discuss." With that, she descended the staircase in her patent leather kitten heels.

"What do you think?" Brian...

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Berkley
• Date d'édition: 2026
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 13: 9798217189885
• Reliure: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Nombre de pages: 336
• Coordonnées du fabricant: BERKLEY; https://www.penguin.com/?s=BERKLEY; ; Unit 2 Limavady Business Park; Limavady; County Londonderry; BT49 0HR; Royaume-Uni
• Personne responsable: Libri GmbH; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; Hessen; Allemagne