AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Wildly entertaining."-The New York Times "Ingenious."-The Washington Post New York Times bestselling author Grady Hendrix takes on the haunted house in a thrilling new novel that explores the way your past—and your family—can haunt you like nothing else. When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world. Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market. But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them… Like his novels The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires and The Final Girl Support Group, How to Sell a Haunted House is classic Hendrix: equal parts heartfelt and terrifying—a gripping new read from “the horror master” (USA Today).

Hendrix is clearly a good horror writer. There are some moments in How to Sell a Haunted House where Hendrix knocks it out of the park. The novel is a long meditation on the role puppets have had in theater and how they are ways for performers to free their identities in the worst possible way. At the beginning of the story, when the protagonist goes back to her dead mother's house to execute the will, all this puppet history feels a but forced -- making the mother a puppeteer just let Hendrix put creepy dolls all over the place. But almost out of nowhere, Hendrix introduces the backstory of the protagonist's brother and his experience in an experimental puppet theater and all that meditation on the evil of puppets comes home in the best way. The middle of the novel is incredible -- it would be a brilliant horror short story. Unfortunately, when Hendrix goes back to his main story, he starts introducing the protagonist's family of witches and curse experts and the whole thing gets a bit too cute. The revelation of the end doesn't really land the horror and some of the ideas (such as a giant invisible family dog puppet ghost) are just one shark too far to jump. Still, How to Sell a Haunted House isn't bad. While it's not a great horror novel, it's a horror novel with truly great parts, and if you're a fan of that genre, it might be worth a look despite its flaws.