How to Fake a Haunting

by Christa Carmen

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Pub Date Oct 07 2025 | Archive Date Oct 21 2025

Thomas & Mercer

General Fiction (Adult) | Mystery & Thrillers

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Description

A desperate woman’s plot to frighten her husband out of her life takes a nightmarish turn in a chilling novel of modern horror by a Bram Stoker Award–winning author.

Lainey Taylor is being pushed to the brink by her alcoholic husband, Callum. Prone to hallucinations and erratic behavior, it’s only a matter of time before he puts Lainey’s life—and that of their daughter, Beatrix—in jeopardy. A divorce and full custody is out of the question. In Callum’s words: Over my dead body.

Lainey’s sympathetic friend Adelaide has a wild solution. They’ll stage a haunting so convincing it will drive Callum out of Lainey’s life for good. Nothing too over the top: strange smells, noises in the walls, and flies unleashed along the windowsills. It could work. Considering Callum’s alcohol-induced night terrors, he’s already close to broken. With each new scare, Lainey is closer to seeing the haunting through to its bitter, freeing end.

But in a house filled with so much rage, resentment, and fear, is it any wonder that Lainey and Adelaide’s plan goes horribly wrong? As their fake haunting spirals into something no one can control, Lainey discovers that the only way out of this frightening trap is to join forces with Callum, or die trying.

A desperate woman’s plot to frighten her husband out of her life takes a nightmarish turn in a chilling novel of modern horror by a Bram Stoker Award–winning author.

Lainey Taylor is being pushed to...

A Note From the Publisher

Christa Carmen is the author of Beneath the Poet’s House; The Daughters of Block Island, winner of the Bram Stoker Award and a Shirley Jackson Award finalist; Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked, an Indie Horror Book Award winner; and numerous short stories, including the Bram Stoker Award–nominated “Through the Looking Glass and Straight into Hell.” She has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA from Boston College, and an MFA from the University of Southern Maine. Christa lives in Rhode Island with her husband, daughter, and bloodhound–golden retriever mix. When she’s not writing, Christa keeps chickens and uses a Ouija board to ghost-hug her dear, departed beagle. Most of her work comes from gazing upon the ghosts of the past or else into the dark corners of nature, those places where whorls of bark become owl eyes, and deer step through tunnels of hanging leaves and creeping briars only to disappear. For more information, visit www.christacarmen.com.

Christa Carmen is the author of Beneath the Poet’s House; The Daughters of Block Island, winner of the Bram Stoker Award and a Shirley Jackson Award finalist; Something Borrowed, Something...

Advance Praise

“Christa Carmen delivers the goods in this twisty, clever domestic horror novel that Rachel Harrison fans will love! A twenty-first-century Amityville, haunted by marital strife and the meddling best friend we all need. Now I want the film version of this, immediately!” —Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of The Night Birds and Road of Bones

“How to Fake a Haunting is a poignant, frightening, and utterly original story about the ghosts that haunt families and the homes they create. By turns darkly funny, emotionally devastating, and memorably chilling, this book twists the horror genre in ways I never saw coming.” —Tracy Sierra, author of Nightwatching

“Christa Carmen joins the eerie echelon of Catriona Ward and Silvia Moreno-Garcia as one of the reigning queens of modern gothic. How to Fake a Haunting forgoes the fog and centuries-old castles for something far more frightening: the beguiling black mold insinuating itself within contemporary homelife. The gloom and ghouls may be prefab, but the ghosts lingering within this toxically haunted house are real all the same.” —Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Carmen is at the top of her game with this bewitching page-turner that pulls you in through its endearing characters, slowly creeps open, and finally rips you apart in a harrowing climax.” —Kate Maruyama, author of The Collective and Bleak Houses

“A table-turning thrill ride that chases you to the very end. Carmen puts a terrifying new spin on what it means to be haunted.” —Lindy Ryan, author of Bless Your Heart

“Relentless, heartbreaking, and unexpectedly funny in so many places, a deeply human work that I’ll be thinking about for many months to come.” —Cassandra Khaw, author of The Salt Grows Heavy and Nothing But Blackened Teeth

“One of the most intriguing and beguiling takes on the suburban-gothic haunted house since Anne Rivers Siddon’s The House Next Door. Carmen doesn’t scrimp on the spooky atmospherics, but also wisely keeps the true scares rooted in the living and the all-too-real.” —Nat Cassidy, bestselling author of When the Wolf Comes Home and Mary

“How to Fake a Haunting is tight, clever, and expertly plotted. An impressive and heartfelt novel.” —Sarah Langan, author of Good Neighbors and Pam Kowolski is a Monster!