Beckoning Dead

Sadie has a gift. And she'll do anything to keep from using it. At sixteen, Sadie Young had a brush with death, and as a result she became more sensitive to the supernatural. Rather than embrace this gift, she spent years running from it, and from the darkness that once preyed upon her. Now twenty-five and working as a librarian, Sadie is called upon by a desperate family friend to look into a strange series of events. A teenaged girl has entered a reputedly haunted house in town and has gone mad. Committed, the girl attempts suicide and claims to be terrorized at all hours by a horrific specter known as "Mother Maggot". Despite having subdued her gift for the past nine years, Sadie wishes to assist the girl and reticently agrees to visit the site of the haunting. But upon entering the house on Beacon Hill, she discovers that Mother Maggot isn't merely a figment of a disturbed teen's imagination . . .

Having explored the shadowed ruin of Beacon Hill, Sadie and August are drawn deeper into a dark and winding history. It was at the infamous Rainier Asylum that local horrors were first conjured, and compelled by a mix of duty and guilt, the librarians begin to look into the institution's sordid past. For years, locals have reported seeing something hideous stalking about the abandoned asylum-something with large eyes and twisted limbs. When a young farmhand meets this diabolical presence face-to-face and disappears, Sadie and August decide to visit the site to search for him, certain that his disappearance is linked to their investigation. There, they find the nighted corners of the shuttered institution are astir with many terrible apparitions. The things that walk the halls of Rainier Asylum are horrific beyond imagining, and as she descends into the depths of the forsaken building, Sadie stumbles upon something most unexpected-something that connects her to the very horrors she seeks to overcome.

The house had not been lived in, but it had never been empty... Fresh from their expedition into Rainier Asylum, librarians Sadie and August attempt to dig further into the past, uncovering hideous truths related to the noxious cult. Their research into the diabolical sect dredges up more questions than answers, however-especially where Sadie's own history is concerned. She finds herself wondering just how much of what she's been told about her origins is true, and is assailed by doubts about her upbringing. While grappling with her own angst, Sadie encounters a ghost from her past and soon finds herself steered to the doorstep of a lonesome manor house. This crumbling place, hidden amidst the pines, may prove to be the black heart at the very center of the diabolical conspiracy. The two librarians set out into the remote hillside to explore the shadowed property, but the house-and its nightmarish tenants-are not what they seem. Whatever answers they stand to gain from their trip may come at too high a cost.

Ambrose Ibsen presents Book 4 in the Beckoning Dead series.

Sadie has a gift. And she'll do anything to keep from using it. At sixteen, Sadie Young had a brush with death, and as a result she became more sensitive to the supernatural. Rather than embrace this gift, she spent years running from it, and from the darkness that once preyed upon her. Now twenty-five and working as a librarian, Sadie is called upon by a desperate family friend to look into a strange series of events. A teenaged girl has entered a reputedly haunted house in town and has gone mad. Committed, the girl attempts suicide and claims to be terrorized at all hours by a horrific specter known as "Mother Maggot." Despite having subdued her gift for the past nine years, Sadie wishes to assist the girl and reticently agrees to visit the site of the haunting. But upon entering the house on Beacon Hill, she discovers that Mother Maggot isn't merely a figment of a disturbed teen's imagination . . . This collection contains the first three books in the Beckoning Dead series: The Haunting of Beacon Hill, The Haunting of Rainier Asylum, and The Haunting of Winslow Manor.