Violet

Thomas’s slow-burning second novel (after Kill Creek) is saturated with an atmosphere of loss, from the trauma endured by the protagonists to the decrepit house that lures them into its clutches. After Kris Barlow’s husband is killed in a car accident, Kris takes her eight-year-old daughter, Sadie, to stay at her family’s old summer house, where, decades earlier, Kris coped with the death of her mother. But instead of her idyllic memory, Kris finds a decaying house in a dying town plagued by loss and distrust. The longer they stay in the home, the more Sadie pulls away, drawn to the voices that lurk in the walls. Slowly, Kris realizes that the sorrow she endured there remained and festered, developing into a ruthless monster. Though the level of detail is ponderous—including multiple pages spent on Kris brushing her teeth—Thomas conjures the power of grief with dreadful clarity, rendering the entity’s vengeance as inevitable as it is chilling. It’s a gruesome, ghostly, yet moving tale of love, loss, and the endless power of memory. (Oct.)