Beneath the Poet’s House

Bram Stoker Award winner Carmen (The Daughters of Block Island) weaves a captivating web of psychological suspense in her latest spine-tingler. Struggling mystery writer Saoirse White leaves New Jersey for Providence, R.I., following the death of her husband. There, she leases a house that once belonged to Sarah Helen Whitman, the 19th-century poet, essayist, spiritualist, and paramour of Edgar Allan Poe. Saoirse, the author of a successful cozy series, hopes the new location will resolve the writer’s block that led her previous agent to drop her. Shortly after arriving in Providence, she befriends a trio of Ouija-board-toting transcendentalists who consider themselves devotees of Whitman, and is swept off her feet by Pulitzer Prize–winning gothic novelist Emmitt Powell. The newfound fellowship inspires Saoirse creatively, but she gradually begins to question the motives of her new friends, and grows nervous that details about the precise nature of her husband’s death will get out. Carmen delivers game-changing twists at a devilish clip, forcing readers’ sympathies to shift again and again, and her gift for chilling atmospherics is on full display. Though the story begins to strain credulitywomewhat in act three, readers are unlikely to mind. For gothic mystery fans, this is a treat. Agent: Jill Marr, Sandra Dijkstra Literary. (Dec.)