Riley Sager

<b>THE INSTANT <i>NEW YORK TIMES </i>BESTSELLER<br/><br/>In the latest jaw-dropping thriller from <i>New York Times </i>bestselling author Riley Sager, a man must contend with the long-ago disappearance of his childhood best friend-and the dark secrets lurking just beyond the safe confines of his picture-perfect neighborhood.</b><br/><br/>The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh's backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul-de-sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again.<br/><br/>Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone seems to be roaming the cul-de-sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy's presence keep appearing in Ethan's backyard. Is someone playing a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle?<br/><br/>The mysterious occurrences prompt Ethan to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that reunites him with former friends and neighbors and leads him into the woods that surround Hemlock Circle. Woods where Billy claimed ghosts roamed and where a mysterious institute does clandestine research on a crumbling estate. <br/><br/>The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that no place-be it quiet forest or suburban street-is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.

<b>THE INSTANT&#160;<i>NEW YORK TIMES&#160;</i>BESTSELLER - One of&#160;<i>USA Today</i>'s Best Books of 2020<br/><br/> "A haunted house story-with a twist....[Sager] does not hold back"(<i>Rolling Stone</i>) in this chilling thriller from the author of <i>Final Girls</i> and <i>Survive the Night</i>.</b><br/> <b>&#160;</b><br/> <i>Every house has a story to tell and a secret to share.</i><b><br/> </b><br/> Twenty-five years ago, Maggie Holt and her parents moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. Three weeks later they fled in the dead of night, an ordeal her father recounted in a memoir called&#160;<i>House of Horrors</i>. His story of supernatural happenings and malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling&#160;<i>The Amityville Horror</i>&#160;in popularity-and skepticism.<br/><br/> Maggie was too young to remember any of the horrific events that supposedly took place, and as an adult she doesn't believe a word of her father's claims. Ghosts, after all, don't exist. When she inherits Baneberry Hall after his death and returns to renovate the place and sell it, her homecoming is anything but warm. The locals aren't thrilled that their small town has been made infamous, and human characters with starring roles in&#160;<i>House of Horrors</i> are waiting in the shadows. <br/> &#160;<br/> Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself-a place where unsettling whispers of the past lurk around every corner. And as Maggie starts to experience strange occurrences ripped from the pages of her father's book, the truth she uncovers about the house's dark history will challenge everything she believes.