Moriah

Mills (Revenants) sets his engrossing horror-tinged novel in a small town in Vermont nearly a decade after the end of the Civil War. Thaddeus and Ambrose Lynch call up the dead for a tragic lot of desperate believers who’ve taken up residence in the brothers’ bleak farmhouse; sister Sally tends to them all and dreams of escaping her hardscrabble existence. When writer Silas Flood comes to town, intending to investigate rumors of the supernatural, his arrival churns up memories of the real-life monsters that the Lynches have long tried to bury, in turn evoking the demons that plague Flood’s every waking and sleeping moment. This sets in motion a shocking act that leaves these damaged souls even more broken. Mills deftly jumps between narratives as the story unfolds, his prose saturating every page with dread as he teases out his characters’ secrets and lies. This intense novel will draw in readers outside Mills’s usual audience. (Apr.)