Katie and I are avid fans of Simone St. James's chillers. After a visit to the Sundown Motel we've avidly devoured her writings, eagerly wanting more. I think her latest, A Box Full of Darkness, is one of her best ever.
I love her stories for the same reasons I love my daughter, Amber's and some, but not all, of Stephen King's. The horror comes from an excellent blend of the occult and the evils and messiness of the human heart and relationships. The authors can create plausible fantasy/reality worlds and maintain them for hundreds of pages. That's harder than most people imagine. The characters are believable, no matter how strange some seem. And the narratives are super engaging. You really care whether the protagonists get out alive.
The narrators in this case are three siblings, the product of a very dysfunctional family who grew up in a very creepy house in a town that could have been lifted from Stephen King's imagination. Both parents are dead. Violet, the oldest, works for a company that cleans out the last residences of the deceased with no family members to do so.
"It was an efficient process. When I had no connection to the person who died, I could do the job without shedding a tear or feeling a pang of grief."
She's spent time in psych hospitals for an unwanted ability to see dead people.
Vail, the middle child, a former Olympic diver, spends his time trying to prove the existence of UFOs and alien abductions. Dodie, the youngest, is a model in New York City.
Their lives are about to come together after decades of going their separate ways. Ben, their beloved little brother is calling them home to the vacant house they grew up in.
There's only one problem. Ben vanished without a trace when he was six and the kids were playing hide and seek. Nobody could find him, not even the police. He's presumed dead--a very cold case.
The siblings think they'll learn what actually happened that long ago day that was the beginning of the end for their family. But this knowledge may come with quite a high cost. They've been told that of the three who enter the house only two will leave.
On a purrrsonal note. Yesterday and today were the two sales days of Clean Sweep. The place was swarming with happy bargain hunters who bought up a lot of the merch. I was in charge of Jules' Closet, the area devoted to clothes. I'm given that sweet assignment every year because of my bubbly, outgoing personality. It's more like being a party hostess than actually working. The highlights for me were being able to reunite a woman who was moving the next day with her pocketbook, being interviewed by two reporters--print and TV and being told that I'm an excellent subject, and our boss, Lisa Morin, getting food that I can eat. Yesterday she treated the crew to Harvest Moon lunch 😋 😍 ☺️ and today when she got bagels 🥯 she remembered my favorite--sweet cinnamon. We have today and tomorrow off. Then we start clean up.
A great big shout out goes out to the 2026 Clean Sweep crew and our enthusiastic customers.
Jules Hathaway
Sent from my Galaxy
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