House of Beth

Cullen debuts with a singular tale of supernatural sisterhood. Bisexual Manhattan literary agency assistant Cassie Jackson’s debilitating OCD flares up when she discovers the boss she made no secret of detesting slumped over his desk, bloodied and apparently dead. Convinced that she’ll somehow be blamed for his demise, Cassie flees to the New Jersey hometown she left a decade earlier. Conveniently, her father and stepmother are wintering in Florida, leaving her childhood home empty. Better still, she reconnects with her high school bestie Eli McKean, now a widowed father of two. There’s instant chemistry, as well as mutual need: Cassie is jobless and rudderless, while Eli seems lost without his late wife, Beth, a devoted homemaker. As the couple’s relationship deepens despite Cassie’s growing feeling that she’s stepping “into someone else’s life,” readers are thrown a curveball: the ghost of Beth, who can’t remember the circumstances of her death, has taken to haunting the woods near her former home. Cullen handles the gothic story line gracefully, pulling her heroines together in surprising ways without laying on the fantasy elements too thick. She’s less adroit with the mystery of Beth’s death, which only heats up toward the very end. Still, evocative prose, quirky characters, and thought-provoking questions of agency vs. destiny make this an auspicious first outing. Agent: Sarah Bowlin, Aevitas Creative Management. (July)