The House of Small Shadows: Adam Nevill

This was one of those books that was hard to put down. I was convinced there were going to be Taxidermy children, the children missing from the special school... The story opens with a woman, Catherine, who has had a troubled past and a recent miscarriage. She is working as an appraiser for an antique house and is beckoned to an old run down home called the "Red House", the home of a popular deceased taxidermist, Mason. The house is a treasure trove of antiques, but something isn't right about it. The descendant, Edith, who is in charge of the house is very old fashioned and odd. She tells Catherine she is going to have to come back with just her essentials and spend a few nights there in order to catalogue everything. One her way out, the house keeper, who is mute, slips her a piece of paper on which is written "Don't ever come back" Catherine discusses the note with her boss and decides to go back since this opportunity is too good to miss. Back at the house she realizes Mason was obsessed with taxidermy and believes he stole misfit children from a home for special children before she was born. She also believes they took her best friend, a handicapped girl, from her school when she was little. The first night she stays she hears little footfalls throughout the house at night, but never sees anything. She is soon drugged and kept at the house against her will because Edith insists she stay for the celebration in town. Catherine had already wandered to town and it was deserted. She tries to leave that night and the roads are blocked so she can't get out, in town people are very creepy and seem to be either children or very old hunched over people. Her ex-boyfriend Mike shows up to get her out of there, despite his constant objections that something wasn't right there, Catherine goes into the church to get the car keys instead of just stealing into the night with Mike. When she turns back he is gone. After the "celebration"? She goes back to the red house and finds Tara and Mike killed and being pickled in brine. She breaks down, but can't get out of the house. The House comes alive and with music leads her to the attic to show her that Edith was not alive the entire time, there is just a skin of her folded in a trunk. She is shown a bunch of visions and lays down while small creatures do something with her face. When she wakes the house is boarded up and in shatters, she looks in a piece of broken glass and has become Edith, the shell of her skin lays on the bed by her. Hearing a car she looks out the window and sees her boss drive up with a leather mask. He "unstuffs" the housekeeper, who she then realizes was her mother. Upon further inspection of the house that she is now locked into she finds her ex-boyfriends new girlfriend, Tara, who has had her eyes taken out and replaced with glass eyes. She knows she is now the new caregiver of the house and Tara is now the new housekeeper and seems fine with this fate.