Stone Mad - by D M Pulley (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From the bestselling author of The Dead Key and No One's Home, comes a thriller about a haunted mansion, a missing girl, and the woman who connects them.

Life fell apart for Mannie Wallace after her daughter's best friend was abducted from the playground right under Mannie's nose. Six years later, Mannie is working as an engineer turned insurance investigator and barely holding the pieces of her family together. When an eccentric developer hires her to survey an infamously haunted Gilded Age mansion, Stone Mad Castle, it could be just the thing she needs to get her career and life back on track.

But once inside the abandoned castle, her dream job becomes a nightmare when the motley crew of investigators discovers a dead body in the basement and Mannie starts seeing ghosts. Probing deeper into the mansion, she begins to suspect that Stone Mad's sinister past may be connected to the little girl she lost. Her daughter, now fourteen and obsessed with true crime, is convinced that girls have been mysteriously disappearing near the haunted house at an alarming rate for more than a century.

Twist follows twist, like the hidden passageways that honeycomb the castle, as Mannie risks everything to unravel the mansion's secrets and uncover the fate of her daughter's missing friend. In the end, Mannie must solve the mystery of Stone Mad once and for all ... or become the next chapter in its haunted story.

Review Quotes

"Disturbing and creepy...Reminds me of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. I loved every second of it!"

-- "Matthew Farrell, bestselling author of What Have You Done, on No One's Home"

"Fast paced, faultlessly written, and engaging, this is a page turner with a very surprising and plausible twist."

-- "Publishers Weekly​ on The Dead Key"

"Feels alive and haunted...Genuine suspense with satisfying surprises."

-- "Kirkus Reviews on The Dead Key"

"HGTV meets Stephen King--creepy, spooky fun!"

-- "Mary Doria Russell, author of The Sparrow and The Women of Copper Country, on No One's Home"

"Pulley weaves threads of hypnotic suspense with the sad strands of a family lost to one another...A contemporary intelligent thriller that can stand with the canon of the legendary Shirley Jackson."

-- "Amber Cowie, bestselling author of Rapid Falls, on No One's Home"

"This fascinating, frustrating novel brings a fresh imagining of this world of larceny and murder...A good read."

-- "Booklist on The Dead Key"