Gillian Flynn’s Edgar Award-winning homage towards the classic ghost story, posted for the first time as a standalone.

A canny young woman is struggling to survive by perpetrating various degrees of mostly harmless fraud. On the rainy April morning hours, she actually is reading auras at Religious Palms when Susan Burke strolls in. An enthusiastic observer of human behavior, our unnamed narrator instantly diagnoses beautiful, wealthy Susan as an disappointed woman wanting to provide her lovely lifestyle a drama injection. Nevertheless, when the about The Grownup: A TALE by the writer of Gone Lady ‘psychic’ visits the eerie Victorian house that has been the foundation of Susan’s terror and grief, she realizes she may not need to pretend to trust in ghosts any more. Miles, Susan’s teenage stepson, doesn’t help matters with his troubling way and grisly creativity. The three are shortly locked within a chilling battle to discover where in fact the evil truly lurks and what, if anything, can be done to escape it.

“The Grownup,” which originally appeared as “WHAT NOW ??” in George R. R. Martin’s Rogues anthology, shows once again that Gillian Flynn is among the world’s most original and experienced voices in fiction.