These Fleeting Shadows

July 25, 2022
Helen Vaughan, 17, doesn’t know why people instinctively dislike her, nor why she’s plagued by peculiar dreams of her family’s ancestral home, in Marshall’s (Our Last Echoes) pulse-pounding horror novel. Helen also can’t remember why she and her mother fled Harrowstone Hall (dubbed “Harrow”), their family’s historic estate, when Helen was seven, but she suspects the issues interrelate. Her mother hasn’t spoken with Helen’s grandparents in a decade, so it’s a shock when, upon her grandfather’s death, he leaves both Harrow and his $40 million estate to Helen. To inherit it, however, she must live in Harrow for one year. Determined to learn why the house haunts her dreams, Helen, aided by her cousins and an enigmatic “Harrow Witch,” agrees, but when she starts falling ill, losing time, and seeing monsters that inexplicably disappear, she worries she may not live long enough to find out. While Harrow’s mythos is muddled, complex plotting, nightmarish imagery, and haunting prose, coupled with Helen’s equal parts anxious and driven first-person narrative, buoy Marshall’s mystifying tale. One Vaughan cousin is Black; all other characters cue as white. Ages 14–up. Agent: Lauren Spieller, Triada US.