Happy People Don't Live Here

In Amber Sparks’ highly anticipated debut novel, a reclusive mother and her saturnine daughter move into a haunted building brimming with eccentrics—and secrets.

Just past the edge of summer, Alice and Fern arrive at the Pine Lake Apartments—a former sanitorium occupied by an ensemble of peculiar neighbors and a smattering of ghosts. Among the living: a professional mermaid, a handyperson moonlighting as a medium, and an awkward professor of medieval studies. For the determinedly private Alice, Pine Lake seems the perfect place to hide herself and her daughter—until the day Fern finds a dead body in the dumpster. Intent on solving this mystery, and dodging warnings from her increasingly paranoid mother, Fern’s investigation digs up long-buried secrets that implicate each of her neighbors . . . and conjures a new party from beyond the grave. A darkly funny gothic tale, Happy People Don’t Live Here is an unforgettable novel from a “master of the fantastic” (Roxane Gay) that takes a sharp look at love, family, and the sometimes-dangerous myths we make for ourselves.