About the Book
"Part ghost story, part coming-of-age story, John Searles' Help for the Haunted is a dazzling, dark portrait of a troubled family beset by the supernatural. Searles ratchets up the tension with every passing chapter, and delivers authentic and well-earned scares--all written through the lens of a lonely teenager searching for answers. The result is a novel both frightening and beautiful."
-- Gillian Flynn
An unforgettable story of a most unusual family, their deep secrets, their harrowing tragedy, and ultimately, a daughter's discovery of a dark and unexpected mystery.
Sylvie Mason's parents have an unusual occupation--helping "haunted souls" find peace. After receiving a strange phone call one winter's night, they leave the house and are later murdered in an old church in a horrifying act of violence.
A year later, Sylvie is living in the care of her older sister, who may be to blame for what happened to their parents. Now, the inquisitive teenager pursues the mystery, moving closer to the knowledge of what occurred that night--and to the truth about her family's past and the secrets that have haunted them for years.
Capturing the vivid eeriness of Stephen King's works with the compelling quirkiness of John Irving's beloved novels, Help for the Haunted is that rare story that brings to life a richly imagined and wholly original world. From the very first page, it takes readers on a captivating journey, told in the heartbreakingly resonant voice of a young heroine who is determined to discover the truth about her family and what went wrong one snowy winter night.
About the Author :
John Searles is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of four novels. His books have been published in over a dozen languages and have been voted "Best of the Year" or top picks by Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, Salon and the American Library Association. A frequent contributor to The New York Times and The Washington Post, John was a top editor at Cosmopolitan for two decades, first hired by Helen Gurley Brown.
Review :
"Wonderful...A coming of age tale that is poignant and touching...and will scare the living hell out of you. I loved every page of this novel: I loved the sisters and the story and the page-turning mystery. I just may never go downstairs into my basement again." - Chris Bohjalian, bestselling author of Midwives and The Light in the Ruins
"Heart-thumping...nearly impossible to put down." - Cleveland Plain Dealer
"John Searles wrapped a ghost story inside a mystery, and the result is a worthy thriller...HELP FOR THE HAUNTED's alternating chapters are cleverly split in time to reveal what came before and after a deadly tragedy at the heart of this captivating story." - Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Searles is a top-notch storyteller. He sets a mood of unease that builds up to a sense of dread... It's hard to stop reading." - Charlotte Observer
"The perfect Halloween read for those with a taste for haunted basements, creepy always-smiling dolls, and weirdly dysfunctional families...Searles brings the torture of adolescence, the scourge of notoriety, and the pain of being young and different vividly to the page." - Boston Globe
"[Searles'] new release about a young girl whose parents are self-proclaimed 'saviors of haunted souls, ' his his most engrossing yet." - People
"An expertly-wrought, coming-of-age story with a healthy dose of creepiness." - Amazon.com, "Best Book of the Month"
"The best scary stories unfold on the porous boundary between the supernatural and the ordinary. The moving and elegantly constructed Help for the Haunted by John Searles places a tense family drama in the context of a series of exorcisms...Searles craftily uses the conventions of the horror novel to cast light on the troubled dynamics at work inside a family, as well as the pressures from the outside world. His novel is both a suspenseful page turner and a provocative look at what it means to be haunted." - Columbus Dispatch
"[Searles] has a distinct talent for fashioning chilling, thrilling novels." - New York Daily News
"Captivating...Involves both classic horror elements (a malevolent rag doll, a stolen diary, a hatchet, a scary basement) and contemporary ones (a prescription for Vicodin). Searles controls the plot with a sure hand and wraps up the situation on Butter Lane in a satisfying and believable way. The darkest secrets in this book are not paranormal at all, but chillingly ordinary." - New York Newsday
"[Searles] has crafted a strange, spooky world that is absolutely believable. Sweet, precocious, desperate Sylvie is a memorable young striver in the tradition of Scout Finch, and HELP FOR THE HAUNTED is an exceptional piece of storytelling." - Washington Post
"Readers of this unsettling coming-of-age story from Searles may feel the need to whistle past the graveyard at the end. Nothing has been the same for Sylvie Mason since the night her parents went to a deserted church...Her current existence, her parents' 'gifts' and vagabond lifestyle, and strange goings-on in the Masons' basement unfold in nonlinear fashion, keeping the reader on the edge while Sylvie bravely uncovers her family's many secrets." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Readers of this unsettling coming-of-age story from Searles may feel the need to whistle past the graveyard at the end...[Events] unfold in nonlinear fashion, keeping the reader on edge while Sylvie bravely uncovers her family's many secrets." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A masterful genre mash-up that's part paranormal thriller, part coming-of-age story, part crime fiction, Searles' eerie novel about a young girl uncovering the mystery of her parents' murders builds to a stunning and poignant conclusion." - Entertainment Weekly
"The family demons are more troubling than the supernatural ones in John Searles' new novel...Sylvie's flashbacks and exploration of her mom and dad's relationship will haunt readers' hearts after they turn the final page." - USA Today
"Our starred review of the day. John Searles has hit it out of the park with this perfect cross-over novel--a creepy coming-of-age mystery full of family secrets, in which horror is generated not only by the unknown, but also by the reality of abruptly losing one's parents as a teen." - School Library Journal (starred review)
"A truly creepy, smart psychological thriller that will keep readers turning pages until the very end. Highly recommended." - Library Journal (starred review)
"A rich and tense suspense story that serves up plenty of genuine thrills but also moves the reader with elegant insights into the enigma that is Family." - Khaled Hosseini, bestselling author of And the Mountains Echoed and The Kite Runner
"Disturbingly engrossing." - People
"A poignant story of a family, of parents navigating an odd and dangerous career, of daughters shaken by doubt and loss and grief -- and the gulf that widens between them all...A compelling mystery." - Miami Herald
"Involves both classic horror elements (a malevolent rag doll, a stolen diary, a hatchet, a scary basement) and contemporary ones (a prescription for Vicodin). Searles controls the plot with a sure hand and wraps up the situation on Butter Lane in a satisfying and believable way." - New York Newsday
"Searles really cranks up the suspense...A real page-turner." - School Library Journal (starred review)
"Full of terror, totally compelling, believable, and ghostly chilling...The horror that stocks this page-turner is so adroitly grounded in things ordinary and real that the reader almost suspends disbelief and comes to think that maybe there are malevolent spirits out there." - NPR
"Creepy, disturbing and compelling, with well-drawn characters, this is gothic suspense at its finest." - Statesman Journal (Oregon)
"[HELP FOR THE HAUNTED] is no simple ghost story...As the story zips back and forth through time, it's rarely clear what's real and what's not, though one thing is for sure: The "literal" bedevilment the Masons cast from other houses is nothing compared to what's in their own." - Chicago Magazine
"A bold, suspenseful, all-consuming ghost story." - Publishers Weekly
"This is edge-of-your-seat reading of a very high quality, and, be warned, it is seriously spine-tingling." - Robert Goolrick, bestselling author of A Reliable Wife
Searles successfuly jumps back and forth in time to let these stories unfold, sewing clues and strange details along hte way...A somber, well-paced journey, wrappe din a mysery, that will keep readers guessing until the revealing conclusion. - Kirkus Reviews
"[Searles] has crafted a strange, spooky world that is absolutely believable. Sweet, precocious, desperate Sylvie is a memorable young striver in the tradition of Scout Finch, and HELP FOR THE HAUNTED is an exceptional piece of storytelling, finally not about demons, but human beings who are all too flawed and all too real." - Washington Post
"Moving and elegantly constructed...both a suspenseful page turner and a provocative look at what it means to be haunted." - Columbus Dispatch
"A dazzling, dark portrait of a troubled family beset by the supernatural. Searles ratchets up the tension with every passing chapter, and delivers authentic and well-earned scares--all written through the lens of a lonely teenager searching for answers. The result is a novel both frightening and beautiful." - Gillian Flynn
"Funny, mysterious, and poignant. . . . This story is filled with the angst of what might have been, the ache of true love, and the terror of loss. This is a genuine page-turner written so beautifully, you never want it to end." - Adriana Trigiani
"Searles expertly manages his cleverly conceived plotline as he alternately withholds and doles out key information in tantalizing fashion... Superlative storytelling." - Booklist (starred review)
"A quickly paced and boldly rendered ghost story, Searles's dark novel about a young girl haunted by the murder of her parents had me up reading all night. And checking the doors. I found it impossible to put down." - Sara Gruen, bestselling author of Water for Elephants and Ape House
"I was completely consumed by Help for the Haunted; I read it in one sitting. I just can't decide what I loved the most: its perfectly pitched teenage narrator; the ghost story that kept me riveted; the thriller that made me say, Oh, just one more chapter." - Jodi Picoult, New York Times-bestselling author of Lone Wolf and The Storyteller
