Chuck Dutton built Music City Salvage with patience and expertise,
stripping historic properties and reselling their bones. Inventory is
running low, so he's thrilled when Augusta Withrow appears in his office
offering salvage rights to her entire property. This could be a gold
mine, so he assigns his daughter, Dahlia, to personally oversee the
project.
The crew finds a handful of surprises right away. Firstly, the place is
in unexpectedly good shape. And then there's the cemetery, about 30
fallen and overgrown graves dating to the early 1900s. Augusta insists
that the cemetery is just a fake, a Halloween prank, so the city gives
the go-ahead, the bulldozer revs up - and it turns up human remains.
Augusta says she doesn't know whose body it is or how many others might
be present and refuses to answer any more questions. Then she stops
answering the phone.
But Dahlia's concerns about the corpse and Augusta's disappearance are
overshadowed when she begins to realize that she and her crew are not
alone, and they're not welcome at the Withrow estate. They have no idea
how much danger they're in, but they're starting to get an idea. On the
crew's third night in the house, a storm shuts down the only road to the
property. The power goes out. Cell signals are iffy. There's nowhere to
go and no one Dahlia can call for help, even if anyone would believe
that she and her crew are being stalked by a murderous phantom.
Something at the Withrow mansion is angry and lost, and this is its last
chance to raise hell before the house is gone forever. And it seems to
be seeking permanent company.
The Family Plot is a haunted house story for the ages - atmospheric,
scary, and strange, with a modern Gothic sensibility to keep it fresh
and interesting - from Cherie Priest, a modern master of supernatural
fiction.
