THE DOLL HOUSE

An inheritance rides on a mother and son spending a week in a creepy mansion.

When Burke Weathers, Garrett Weathers’ rich and famous author grandfather, dies, his will includes an unusual stipulation: Garrett and his mother will only inherit if they spend a week at Inkwell Point, Burke’s home. When they arrive, 13-year-old Garrett soon learns why locals call it “the Doll House.” Eccentric Burke spent his solitary later years creating a series of wooden marionettes in his attic workshop and hanging their body parts from his back porch. Events soon move from the merely unsettling (finding a marionette in a closet, attached to wires “like a levitating scarecrow”) to the unexplainable (a typewriter producing messages for Garrett without anyone touching the keys) to the outright terrifying (an encounter with whatever that thing is in the basement). But the house has a strange effect on Garrett—he’s seemingly unable to stop himself from helping to bring his grandfather’s diabolical plans to fruition. Even seasoned horror readers will find something new here to give them the creeps; twists on the haunted doll trope abound. White-presenting Garrett’s first-person narration, which occasionally addresses readers directly (“if you’re going to stick with me for this whole story, you’ll have to get on board for some weirdness”), plunges right into the heart of the action.

Lots of fun for horror fans who appreciate intense scares.