The Unhaunting
Will be published approx. on 29. September 2026
Book
Hardback
192 pages
978-0-241-84694-0 (ISBN)
Description
In this short, sharp, Southern Gothic horror novel, home takes on a whole new meaning. From Micaiah Johnson, the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The Space Between Worlds.
'You've never seen a haunted house like this one before' KYLIE LEE BAKER
A house, itself, is nothing. It's not a shelter until it is sheltering someone. A house is a housefire, waiting for its match. A house is a ghost story, waiting for its death.
At the end of the Civil War, a daughter of the Confederacy made what she thought was an innocent wish: to build a house where nothing bad could happen. But peace came at a price, and one hundred and seventy years later Shantell and her friends are about to discover where all that darkness ended up.
When Shantell's best friend, Avery, tells her he has inherited a house big enough to make their dreams of a sanctuary come true, she's too cautious to be optimistic. A lifetime of loss - her father to the Iraq war, her brother to police violence, and her mother to suicide - has taught her cynicism, and even though Avery swears the house has never experienced a tragedy, she goes along expecting everything from black mold to evil spirits.
But not only is the house in better shape than they'd expected, it makes them better too: Shantell's anxiety stops flaring up; terminally shallow Avery is suddenly capable of deeper emotions; and Tobias, Avery's older brother and the contractor for the job, even quits chain smoking.
There's an eeriness to the calm, and it's almost a relief when they realize they do not walk alone in Abernathy House. If nothing bad has ever happened here, where are all these ghosts coming from? As they dig into the house's history, Shantell, Avery, and Tobias discover that there's only one thing worse than a house that's haunted: a house that desperately wants to be.
'You've never seen a haunted house like this one before' KYLIE LEE BAKER
A house, itself, is nothing. It's not a shelter until it is sheltering someone. A house is a housefire, waiting for its match. A house is a ghost story, waiting for its death.
At the end of the Civil War, a daughter of the Confederacy made what she thought was an innocent wish: to build a house where nothing bad could happen. But peace came at a price, and one hundred and seventy years later Shantell and her friends are about to discover where all that darkness ended up.
When Shantell's best friend, Avery, tells her he has inherited a house big enough to make their dreams of a sanctuary come true, she's too cautious to be optimistic. A lifetime of loss - her father to the Iraq war, her brother to police violence, and her mother to suicide - has taught her cynicism, and even though Avery swears the house has never experienced a tragedy, she goes along expecting everything from black mold to evil spirits.
But not only is the house in better shape than they'd expected, it makes them better too: Shantell's anxiety stops flaring up; terminally shallow Avery is suddenly capable of deeper emotions; and Tobias, Avery's older brother and the contractor for the job, even quits chain smoking.
There's an eeriness to the calm, and it's almost a relief when they realize they do not walk alone in Abernathy House. If nothing bad has ever happened here, where are all these ghosts coming from? As they dig into the house's history, Shantell, Avery, and Tobias discover that there's only one thing worse than a house that's haunted: a house that desperately wants to be.
Reviews / Votes
A brilliant, spellbinding tale of terror that deftly interrogates privilege and generational trauma while scaring your socks off. You've never seen a haunted house like this one before -- Kylie Lee Baker, Sunday Times bestselling author of Japanese Gothic A bold, beautiful, gut-punch of a story, at turns ferocious and poetic - and sometimes both at once -- Veronica Roth, New York Times bestselling author of Chosen Ones A strong new voice * Sunday Times * One of the most original, imaginative, and terrifying takes on the haunted house genre I've read. . . Johnson has written a novel of unfathomable crimes, privilege, and the buried traumas of our past that exposes both the horrors of the supernatural, and the ones that lurk in our mundane world. One you start reading, you will not want to put it down -- P. Djeli Clark, award-winning author of Ring Shout [The Space Between Worlds] It remained two steps ahead of my imagination * The New York Times * [The Space Between Worlds] Twisting, suspenseful and profound -- Max Gladstone, co-author of the Hugo and Nebula-winning THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR [The Space Between Worlds] Johnson excels at contrasting lives of privilege and poverty * Guardian *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Dimensions
Height: 204 mm
Width: 132 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
500 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-241-84694-0 (9780241846940)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Micaiah Johnson is a Carl Brandon and Compton Crook Award-winning author. Her debut novel, The Space Between Worlds, was a Sunday Times Bestseller, a Locus Award finalist, an Editors' Choice at The New York Times and was named one of best books of 2020 and one of the best science fiction books of the last decade by NPR. Her follow-up novel, Those Beyond the Wall, was released in March 2024 and has been named as a Best Books of 2024 by NPR, Reactor, Esquire and Lithub. She received her BA in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside, and her MFA in fiction from Rutgers University-Camden, and her PhD from Vanderbilt University.