**2024 SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD WINNER

Four gothic novellas from the novelist of Kill Creek and Violet, praised by the New York Times, National Public Radio, and the American Library Association.**

In The Door in the Field, a construction worker's bad day becomes a far worse night when drinks at an off-the-books bar send him down an unforeseeably bloody path.

In The Boy in the Woods, something evil has infected the counselors at a summer camp, and a young boy will have to do anything he can to survive the night.

In One Half of a Child’s Face, a woman spying on her daughter and ex-husband notices an odd painting hanging in an empty apartment . . . one that seems to call to the building’s children.

In Wear Your Secret Like a Stone, a big-box clerk discovers that her book pick for a Halloween display echoes a dark secret hidden beneath the idyllic facade of her hometown.

With this collection, Scott Thomas digs his hands into the soil of the American heartland and establishes himself as a master of Midwestern Gothic.