Home Before Dark: A Novel

One of . . .
Huff Post’s “10 Of The Most Anticipated Book Releases Of June 2020” • Good Housekeeping’s “The 35 Best Books of 2020 to Add to Your Reading List” • Travel + Leisure’s “20 Most Anticipated Summer 2020 Books” • PopSugar’s 17 Most Anticipated Summer Thrillers • Working Mother’s “The 20 Most Anticipated Books of 2020” • Newsweek’s 20 most anticipated summer reads • Publishers Weekly's «Summer Reads 2020» • BookPage’s “2020 Most Anticipated Thrillers and Mysteries” • Today.com’s “16 highly anticipated summer reads” • The Star Tribune’s “Great Escapes” summer reads • BookPage's “Private Eye July”
In the latest thriller from New York Times bestseller Riley Sager, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound—and dangerous—secrets hidden within its walls?
What was it like? Living in that house.
Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism.
Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father's book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father's death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in House of Horrors, lurk in the shadows. And locals aren’t thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie’s father. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself—a place filled with relics from another era that hint at a history of dark deeds. As Maggie experiences strange occurrences straight out of her father’s book, she starts to believe that what he wrote was more fact than fiction.
Alternating between Maggie’s uneasy homecoming and chapters from her father’s book, Home Before Dark is the story of a house with long-buried secrets and a woman’s quest to uncover them—even if the truth is far more terrifying than any haunting. **
Review
“Clever, twisty, and altogether spine-chilling. . . . [A] deliciously terrifying story. … You'll want to read this one after dark, ideally with the wind whistling in the eaves and a window banging somewhere just out of reach. But keep the light switch handy. You just might need it.”
–Ruth Ware, Book of the Month
«What could be better than a haunted house with ghosts aplenty? Home Before Dark is equally superb and terrifying. Buckle up for a wild ride. This book should come with a warning not to be read after dark.” 
–Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of The Other Mrs.  
«Flawless pacing, a dexterous dual narrative, and character through the roof. But the biggest revelation to be found in Home Before Dark is this: There’s nobody writing scarier books than Riley Sager is right now.”
–Josh Malerman, New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box and Malorie 
“Houses breathe. Some have a heartbeat. None forget. Grabbing you from the first page, Riley Sager crafts a devilish plot, twisted timelines, and horrors that linger in this haunting thriller that needs to be on your reading list!”
–J.D. Barker, International Bestselling Author of She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be
«Part ghost story, part murder mystery, Home Before Dark is a nightmare ride of haunting terror and suspense. Dripping with atmosphere and danger, Baneberry Hall is the new Hill House. I couldn’t turn the last 100 pages fast enough.”
–Richard Chizmar, New York Times bestselling author

“[An] outstanding supernatural thriller. … Sager, who makes the house a palpable, threatening presence, does a superb job of anticipating and undermining readers’ expectations. Haunted house fans will be in heaven.”
–Publishers Weekly, starred review
“The ghosts and poltergeist activity Sager conjures are truly chilling, and he does a masterful job of keeping readers guessing until the very end.”
–Kirkus

“For fans of the Amityville Horror story comes yet another breath-stealer from the hit machine Sager.”
–Good Housekeeping, “The 35 Best Books to Add to Your Reading List ASAP.”
«Sager does a superb job of upsetting reader expectations in this horror thriller.”
–Publishers Weekly, "Summer Reads 2020”
"[Home Before Dark] is set to deliver major goose bumps.”
–PopSugar
«King of thrillers, Sager returns with a pulse-pounding, goosebump-inducing tale of a woman who goes back to her childhood home—and the setting of a true horror story.”
–Newsweek 
“Another breathtaking hit from Sager, who’s proven himself a master at crafting new twists on classic horror tales.”
–Booklist
About the Author Home Before Dark is the fourth thriller from Riley Sager, the pseudonym of an author who lives in Princeton, New Jersey. Riley's first novel, Final Girls, was a national and international bestseller that has been published in more than two dozen countries and won the ITW Thriller Award for Best Hardcover Novel. Sager's subsequent novels, The Last Time I Lied and Lock Every Door, were New York Times bestsellers.