2013 Champion – Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award – Technology Fiction, Dream, Horror

It’s Halloween, and existence is grim for twenty-three-year-old Dimitri Petrov. It’s the one-year anniversary of his parents’ fatalities, he’s trapped on page 1000 of his Rasputin zombie novel, and he makes his living composing obituaries.

But things turn from bleak to terrifying when Dimitri is assigned to pay a séance on the reputedly haunted Aspinwall Mansion. There, Dimitri meets Lisa, a punk-rock drummer he falls hard for. But just as he’s about to inquire her out, he unwittingly unleashes malevolent causes, throwing him into a lethal mystery. He wakes up in the morgue-icy chilly and haunted by a cryptic caution distributed by a tantalizing feminine spirit.

As town residents begin to turn up gruesomely murdered, Dimitri have to unravel the connections among his family, the Aspinwall Mansion, as well as the secrets in a pair of crumbling antiquarian books. If he doesn’t, it’s quite possible Lisa will be the next victim.