John Searles’s Help for the Haunted is an unforgettable story of a most unusual family, their deep secrets, their harrowing tragedy, and ultimately, a daughter’s discovery of a dark and unexpected mystery.

Sylvie Mason’s parents have an unusual occupation—helping “haunted souls” find peace. After receiving a strange phone call one winter’s night, they leave the house and are later murdered in an old church in a horrifying act of violence.

A year later, Sylvie is living in the care of her older sister, who may be to blame for what happened to their parents. Now, the inquisitive teenager pursues the mystery, moving closer to the knowledge of what occurred that night—and to the truth about her family’s past and the secrets that have haunted them for years.

Capturing the vivid eeriness of Stephen King’s works with the compelling quirkiness of John Irving’s beloved novels, Help for the Haunted is that rare story that brings to life a richly imagined and wholly original world.

Praise:

"Part ghost story, part coming-of-age story, John Searles’ Help for the Haunted is a dazzling, dark portrait of a troubled family beset by the supernatural. Searles ratchets up the tension with every passing chapter, and delivers authentic and well-earned scares—all written through the lens of a lonely teenager searching for answers. The result is a novel both frightening and beautiful."

--Gillian Flynn, New York Times bestselling author of Gone Girl

“[Searles] has crafted a strange, spooky world that is absolutely believable. Sweet precocious, desperate Sylvie is a memorable young striver in the tradition of Scout Finch, and Help for the Haunted is an exceptional piece of storytelling, finally not about demons, but human beings who are all too flawed and all too real.”
– The Washington Post
“A rich and tense suspense story that serves up plenty of genuine thrills but also moves

the reader with elegant insights into the enigma that is family.”

– Khaled Hosseini, New York Times bestselling author of And the Mountains Echoed and The Kite Runner

“A masterful genre mash-up that’s part paranormal thriller, part coming-of-age story, part crime fiction, Searles’ eerie novel about a young girl uncovering the mystery of her parents’ murders builds to a stunning and poignant conclusion.”
– Entertainment Weekly
“I was completely consumed by HELP FOR THE HAUNTED; I read it in one sitting. I just can’t decide what I loved the most: its perfectly pitched teenage narrator; the ghost story that kept me riveted; the thriller that made me say, Oh, just one more chapter. John Searles has drawn a delicate portrait of the gap between what we know to be true, and what we desperately want to believe. In fact the only flaw I can find is that I’ve finished the novel- and that it’s going to be awfully hard for my next reading choice to measure up.”

--Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of Lone Wolf and The Storyteller

“A poignant story of a family, of parents navigating an odd and dangerous career, of daughters shaken by doubt and loss and grief—and the gulf that widens between them all… A compelling mystery.”
– The Miami Herald (featured interview with John Searles)
“The Masons were demonologists who advertised their services as help for the haunted. But the one who is truly haunted in Searles’ third novel (following Strange but True, 2004) is their 14-year-old daughter, Sylvie, who witnessed her parents’ murders in a church on a bitterly cold evening. Now, a year later, as the case is coming up for trial, she is under pressure from the police because the troubled client she ID’d as her parents’ killer has produced an airtight alibi. Bullied at school and ignored by her older sister, who is now her legal guardian, supersmart, intrepid Sylvie is determined to figure out just what happened on that fateful night, and her search leads to some very surprising answers. Searles expertly manages his cleverly conceived plotline as he alternately withholds and doles out key information in tantalizing fashion. Amid the fascinating cast of characters, including her ne’er-do-well uncle, a kindhearted school counselor, and the specter of her supportive mother, is the unforgettable Sylvie. Somewhat geeky and blind to her own family’s dynamics, Sylvie manages to figure out the hows and whys behind the catastrophic event that changed her life forever. Superlative storytelling.”

--Booklist, STARRED review

“John Searles has given us something wonderful with Help for the Haunted: A coming of age tale that is poignant and touching...and will scare the living hell out of you. I loved every page of this novel: I loved the sisters and the story and the page-turning mystery. I just may never go downstairs into my basement again.”

--Chris Bohjalian, New York Times bestselling author of Midwives and The Light in the Ruins

“Readers of this unsettling coming-of-age story from Searles (Strange but True) may feel the need to whistle past the graveyard by the end. Nothing has been the same for Sylvie Mason since the cold winter’s night when her parents went to a deserted church, not in their self-proclaimed capacity as the saviors of haunted souls, but to meet their runaway older daughter, Rose. Left asleep in the car, Sylvie is awakened by the sound of the gunshots that ended her parents’ lives. Nearly a year later, her grief is still fresh. Schoolmates taunt her, and though Rose has assumed legal responsibility for Sylvie, the older Mason girl fails to properly feed, clothe, or otherwise nurture her younger sister, all the while behaving erratically. Sylvie continues to lie to the police about Rose’s whereabouts that fatal night, even as the trial of a man arrested for the crimes approaches. Her current existence, her parents’ “gifts” and vagabond lifestyle, and strange goings-on in the Masons’ basement unfold in nonlinear fashion, keeping the reader on edge while Sylvie
bravely uncovers her family’s many secrets.”

--Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

“A quickly paced and boldly rendered ghost story, Searles’ dark novel about a young girl haunted by the murder of her parents had me up reading all night. And checking the doors. I found it impossible to put down.”

-- Sara Gruen, New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants

“Searles's wonderfully creepy third novel…is his most disturbingly engrossing [novel] yet.”

--People Magazine

“John Searles wrapped up a ghost story inside a mystery, and the result is a worthy thriller…HELP FOR THE HAUNTED’s alternating chapters are cleverly split in time to reveal what came before and after a deadly tragedy at the heart of this captivating story.”

--Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“No one makes eye contact or talks to me unless it is to taunt me about my parents and the things that happened to them—the thing that almost happened to me too….” Sylvie Mason and her sister, Rose, are left to fend for themselves after a fateful night that claims their parents’ lives. A mysterious phone call is all it took to send her parents out in a blizzard, to a church from which they never returned. All that remains are questions, and Sylvie is determined to find out the truth even if it means going down to the scariest, darkest place in her house: the basement. VERDICT Searles (Boy Still Missing; Strange But True) has written a truly creepy, smart psychological thriller that will keep readers turning pages until the very end. Highly recommended.”

--Library Journal, STARRED review

“The family demons are more troubling than the supernatural ones in John Searles’ new novel… Sylvie’s flashbacks and exploration of her mom and dad’s relationship will haunt readers’ hearts after they turn the final page.”
– USA Today
“Help for the Haunted grabs you by the throat in the opening chapter, and shakes you to the core, just as it sweeps up Sylvie, its young heroine who has to sift madly through a thousand twists and turns to try to tell the paranormal from the mundane in order to solve the unusual circumstances of her parents’ murder and her own part in it. This is edge-of-your-seat reading of a very high quality, and, be warned, it is seriously spine-tingling.”

--Robert Goolrick, New York Times bestselling author of A Reliable Wife

“The mystery of who killed Sylvie’s parents is only the first of many mysteries that unfold in John Searles’ Help for the Haunted, and expertly-wrought, coming-of-age story with a healthy dose of creepiness… The chills deliver, but the depth of the story is what really sets this book apart. Your parents are never gone from you… Sylvie remembers her father saying. And for some, that’s just another way of being haunted.”

– Amazon.com, Featured as “Best Book of the Month”

“Searles (Boy Still Missing, 2001, etc.) turns in another coming-of-age tale, about a young female protagonist and centered around a possibly occult murder mystery. Sylvie Mason's parents are--or were--"demonologists." Devoutly Christian, her dad zealously worked the lecture circuit while her mom had the talent to soothe the haunted humans who came to them for help. When they are both murdered in a church on a snowy night, 14-year-old Sylvie is the sole witness but doesn't fully remember what happened. In the custody of Rose, her spiteful, rebellious older sister, Sylvie struggles to reconcile her bleak new life with her slightly less-bleak former life. Then, she was always the "good daughter" despite being bullied by Rose and kept in the dark about her parents' career. Now, nearly a year later, she is ostracized by her peers, and the fate of the murder suspect rests in her unsure hands. Searles successfully jumps back and forth in time to let these stories unfold, sewing clues and strange details along the way, the creepiest being a doll named Penny that may be possessed. Slowly, Sylvie breaks out of her good-girl mold to uncover greater truths about her sister, herself and what happened the night of the killing…Searles has a knack for building tension; the "haunted" of the title refers as much to Sylvie and her circumstances as to things otherworldly. A somber, well-paced journey, wrapped in a mystery, that will keep readers guessing until the revealing conclusion.”

--Kirkus Reviews

“The best scary stories unfold on the porous boundary between the supernatural and the ordinary. The moving and elegantly constructed Help for the Haunted by John Searles places a tense family drama in the context of a series of exorcisms… Searles craftily uses the conventions of the horror novel to cast light on the troubled dynamics at work inside a family, as well as the pressures from the outside world. His novel is both a suspenseful page turner and a provocative look at what it means to be haunted.”
– The Columbus Dispatch
"I think I’ve just read the perfect book for Halloween and then some: Help for the Haunted by John Searles. It is terrific—literally! Full of terror, totally compelling, believable, and ghostly chilling. Searles knows how to create menacing characters and troubled souls given to extreme behavior, but he’s at his best with psychologically credible, everyday, rational folk who believe in family and love, religion and doing good, but who slip into a netherworld between normal and paranormal…Searles moves back and forth in time, dropping clues, all the while keeping the fright level high. The horror that stocks this page-turner is so adroitly grounded in things ordinary and real that the reader almost suspends disbelief and comes to think that maybe there are malevolent spirits out there."
– National Public Radio (NPR)

"[Searles] has a distinct talent for fashioning chilling, thrilling novels.”
– New York Daily News
“Captivating… Involves both classic horror elements (a malevolent rag doll, a stolen diary, a hatchet, a scary basement) and contemporary ones (a prescription for Vicodin). Searles controls the plot with a sure hand and wraps up the situation on Butter Lane in a satisfying and believable way. The darkest secrets in this book are not paranormal at all,
but chillingly ordinary.”

– Newsday

“Help for the Haunted is a suspense thriller that takes you on an unforgettable ride into the darkest places of a persons soul…Rave reviews comparing John Searles work with that of Stephen King is what drew me to read this one. I was not disappointed. 90% of the way through this novel that author creates such a suspenseful atmosphere you think you have it figured out, you're just waiting for an unveiling. This one really creeped me out and for me, that's the perfect sign of an amazing suspense novel. The ending I truly did not see coming and it's true that there is always more to the story than what you see. I look forward to many more novels from John Searles in the future.”

--Reviews from the Heart

“Searles is a top-notch storyteller. He sets a mood of unease that builds up to a sense of dread…It’s hard to stop reading.”

--Charlotte Observer

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kontakt:

Renata Paczewska

renata@literatura.com.pl