The Stranger Upstairs

Sarah Slade is a therapist with a growing lifestyle blog, a failing marriage, and a talent for editing her own history. Her next project is Black Wood House, empty for forty years since a husband killed his wife in the upstairs bedroom — a fixer-upper that will make excellent content and, she tells herself, a fresh start.

The renovation goes wrong immediately. Builders behave strangely and get hurt, footsteps sound in the attic, and threatening notes begin appearing where only someone inside the house could leave them. Sarah keeps posting, keeps performing, and keeps lying, while her grip on what is actually happening loosens.

Lisa M. Matlin's debut is a haunted-house story that is at least as interested in its narrator as in the house — a sharp, blackly funny psychological thriller about self-invention, online persona, and an extremely unreliable woman.