DIAVOLA

Part family drama, part spine-tingling ghost story, this book is deliciously unsettling and utterly propulsive...

Anna only has one rule for the annual Pace family vacations: tread lightly, and survive.

It isn't easy when she's the only one who doesn't seem to fit in. Her twin brother Benny goes with the flow so much he's practically dissolved, and her high-strung older sister Nicole is so used to everyone - including her blandly docile husband and two young daughters - falling in line that Anna often ends up chastised for simply asking a question. Her Mom is baffled by Anna's life choices (why waste her artistic talent at an ad agency?), and her Dad - well, he just wants a little peace and quiet.

The gorgeous villa outside a remote Tuscan town seems like the perfect place to endure so much family time - not to mention Benny's demanding new boyfriend, Christopher. If her family becomes too much to handle, then at least Anna can wander off to a wine tasting or lose herself in an art gallery. That is, until strange things start to happen - strange noises at night, food rotting within hours, dreams that feel more like memories. Then, the unsettling warnings from the locals: don't open the tower door.

But Anna does open it. And what she releases threatens to devour her family - that is, if her family doesn't tear itself apart first.

DIAVOLA is equal parts a terrifying ghost story and an incisive family drama, exploring loneliness, belonging, and the seemingly inescapable bonds of family mythology.

Jennifer Thorne is the author of Lute, The Wrong Side of Right, The Inside of Out, Night Music, and (with Lee Kelly) The Antiquity Affair. American by birth, she now lives in Gloucestershire, England with her husband and two sons.