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Simone St. James
Simone St. James writes suspenseful novels with a supernatural edge. Readers enjoy her ghost stories and mysteries, including the popular book The Sun Down Motel.
The Sun Down Motel
Synopsis
Every faded small town has a place like the Sun Down Motel, and in Fell, New York, it is a low-slung roadside stop where travelers pass through and locals go to hide. In 1982, Viv Delaney takes the night-clerk shift to save money for a move to the city — and slowly realizes that the motel is haunted, both by something that walks its corridors after dark and by the unsolved deaths of several women in and around Fell. Then Viv vanishes without a trace.
Thirty-five years later, Viv's niece Carly Kirk, who grew up hearing about the aunt who disappeared, drops out of college and drives to Fell to find out what happened. She takes a room, takes the same graveyard shift at the same unchanged motel, and begins retracing Viv's steps — the guest ledger, the flickering lights, the doors that open on their own — until she is pulled toward the same secret, and the same danger, that swallowed her aunt.
Told across the two women's alternating timelines, Simone St. James's novel braids a genuine ghost story with a serial-killer mystery into an atmospheric, propulsive thriller about the women a town would rather forget.
Genres
Characters
Viv DelaneyProtagonist
The Sun Down Motel's 1982 night clerk, who investigates the haunting and the town's unsolved deaths before disappearing.
Carly KirkProtagonist
Viv's niece, who comes to Fell in 2017 to solve her aunt's disappearance and takes the same graveyard shift.
Frequently asked questions
Is The Sun Down Motel part of a series?
No. The Sun Down Motel is a standalone novel by Simone St. James. It isn't numbered or marketed as part of a series, though fans of its blend of ghost story and cold-case mystery often pair it with the author's other standalone thrillers, such as The Broken Girls.
Are Fell, New York and the Sun Down Motel real places?
No, both are fictional. Simone St. James invented the small town of Fell, New York, and its roadside motel for the novel; neither corresponds to a real town or motel of that name.