Bliss House: A Bliss House Novel

Evil acts live forever inside the walls of Bliss House... Rainey Adams is a widow desperate to make a new life for herself and her damaged teenage daughter, Ariel. What could be more perfect than to buy and restore Bliss House, a stunning historic mansion in the calm and beautiful Virginia countryside?On the night Rainey reopens Bliss House to the town of Old Gate, a woman dies violently beneath the house’s star-filled dome. Ariel falls under the strange enchantment of the house, and becomes convinced it will heal her scarred body and return her lost father to her. Rainey, still grieving her husband’s death, must discover exactly what she’s fighting and keep Ariel safe.Only uncovering Bliss House’s terrible past and confronting the very human dangers of the present will help Rainey save her daughter, and redeem the legacy of Bliss House.Bliss House is a contemporary novel in the Bliss House Gothic Series, which also includes the novels Charlotte's Story and The Abandoned Heart. The books and stories in the series can be read in any order.

From Booklist

After the explosion at her St. Louis home—leaving her husband dead and her 14-year-old daughter, Ariel, disfigured—Rainey Adams wants a fresh start. So she buys Bliss House, her ancestral, nineteenth-century Virginia country home, despite its murderous reputation. Here Rainey feels she’s come home, while Ariel senses her father’s presence and sees her healing accelerating. But the aftermath of a gala housewarming party shatters the sense of well-being: during the night, Ariel sees a ghostly woman take a deadly fall, and in the morning Rainey finds the body of her real-estate agent in the hallway. A near-lethal assault and a related murder follow, as Ariel explores the house and becomes more affected by it. Woven through this narration is the generation-old story of a woman’s imprisonment in a secluded underground chamber of the house, a stunning account that a member of the Bliss family finally feels compelled to reveal to Rainey. Benedict combines the supernatural with the all-too-real, peopling the haunted-house milieu with psychopaths and adding elements of guilt and betrayal for an engrossing and suspenseful read. --Michele Leber

About the Author

Laura Benedict is the author of the dark suspense novels BLISS HOUSE (Pegasus Crime, June 2014), DEVIL'S OVEN, a modern Frankenstein tale, ISABELLA MOON, and CALLING MR. LONELY HEARTS (Ballantine). Her work has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, PANK, and numerous anthologies like Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads (Oceanview), and Slices of Flesh (Dark Moon Books). She originated and edited the Surreal South Anthology of Short Fiction Series with her husband, Pinckney Benedict, and edited Feeding Kate, a charity anthology, for their press, Gallowstree Press. A Cincinnati, Ohio native, Laura grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and claims both as hometowns. She currently lives with her family in the southern wilds of a Midwestern state, surrounded by bobcats, coyotes, and other less picturesque predators. Find out more, enter her monthly contests, and follow her blog at laurabenedict.com

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