Universal harvester

Jeremy works the counter at Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa, in the late 1990s. He is aimless and still hollowed out by his mother's death, and the job asks little of him.

Then customers begin bringing tapes back with a complaint. Partway through otherwise ordinary movies, grainy and disturbing footage appears, spliced in by someone. Jeremy and the store's owner, Sarah Jane, set out to learn who made the clips and what they mean.

The search leads away from the video store into other lives and other decades. One strand follows a mother in the 1970s who is drawn into a drifter's cult. Another follows a family in the present day, who are shaken by something they discover in the basement of their farmhouse.

The book borrows the trappings of horror but keeps a quieter pulse. It is a literary mystery set in the rural Midwest, concerned with grief and loneliness, and with the marks people leave behind. Its characters piece together stories to make sense of loss, and the pace is patient, with unease building slowly rather than through shocks.