Incidents Around the House: A Novel

by Josh Malerman Narrated by Delanie Nicole Gill

Overview

“Simply put-and I do not say this lightly-Incidents Around the House is the most purely effective horror novel I have ever read.”-Neil McRobert, Esquire (Best Horror Books of 2024, So Far)

A chilling horror novel about a haunting, told from the perspective of a young girl whose troubled family is targeted by an entity she calls “Other Mommy,” from the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box

“This book is the monster that lives inside your closet.”-Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House

To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There's Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?”*

When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the question over and over, Bela understands that unless she says yes, her family will soon pay.

Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe, but other incidents show cracks in her parents' marriage. The safety Bela relies on is about to unravel.*

But Other Mommy needs an answer.

Incidents Around the House is a chilling, wholly unique tale of true horror about a family as haunted as their home.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Deeply discomfiting, imaginatively ripe, yet ruthlessly efficient . . . Simply put—and I do not say this lightly—Incidents Around the House is the most purely effective horror novel I have ever read.”—Esquire, “Best Horror Books of 2024”

“A disturbing bedtime story told by a broken child, this book IS the monster that lives inside your closet.”—Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House

“A gleeful, mean, old-school scare machine . . . You just have to turn the first page to set it off.”—Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World and Horror Movie

“A masterwork of unadorned existential terror.”—Zoje Stage, USA Today bestselling author of Baby Teeth

“Josh Malerman is such an insidious architect. I call all of his haunted houses home, and this just might be his most devilish design yet.”—Clay McLeod Chapman, author of What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters

“This haunting exploration of the perils of childhood is a story that will stay with you for a long time to come.”—Gwendolyn Kiste, Lambda Literary and Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Reluctant Immortals and The Rust Maidens

“This book does worse than stay with you—it stalks you. Page-turning and nerve-burning—don’t read it after dark.”—Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Queen of Teeth and A Light Most Hateful

“Incidents Around the House effortlessly draws the reader in for a deeply unsettling and genuinely frightening read. It’s a masterclass in scares.”—Brian Keene, bestselling author of End of the Road

“Hereditary meets Skinamarink: one of my favorite books of the year.”—Sarah Langan, author of A Better World

“Terrifying, beguiling, bewitching, awesomely constructed, and a masterpiece of voice and dread.”—Nat Cassidy, author of Mary: An Awakening of Terror and Nestlings

“So gripping in terror, I couldn’t put it down. This is everything I'm looking for in a horror story.”—Laurel Hightower

 “This book has actual jump scares! Trust me: daytime only in a room with no closets.”—Sadie Hartmann, author of 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered

“This is what great horror does: Read it and it will never leave you. Josh Malerman is one of the best.”—Thomas Tessier, award-winning author of The Nightwalker, Rapture, and Fog Heart

"A triumph of craft and suspense.”—Sarah Gailey

“A shocker, a modern horror classic that scared the absolute hell out of me.”—Jonathan Janz, author of Children of the Dark

“Perfectly frightening . . . feels like an otherworldly warning as much as a story.”—Johnny Compton, author of The Spite House

“One of the most terrifying books I have ever read . . . I promise it will leave your heart pounding.”—Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Hugo Award–winning author of HEX and Oracle

Library Journal

05/01/2024

Eight-year-old Bela's imaginary friend, Other Mommy, began as a fun playmate and a way to handle her parents' disintegrating marriage. Other Mommy asks Bela to let her into her heart, but, when refused, her presence grows until others can hear and see her, leading Bela and her parents to go on the run. No matter where they seek shelter, Other Mommy finds Bela and tries to force her to change her answer while menacing anyone who tries to help. In this novel, Malerman (Spin A Black Yarn) explores the idea of a family, rather than a house, being haunted. This is intensified through the use of Bela as the novel's narrator and the fact that her family is nearly her entire world. VERDICT Malerman is extraordinarily skilled at bringing fear to the ordinary and building a sense of unease into terror. He can terrify readers even while writing from a believable child's perspective and voice. For fans of novelists who deftly deploy unease and surreal takes on the routine like Neil Gaiman, Catriona Ward, or Paul Tremblay, or Scott Thomas's Violet, another novels about an imaginary friend.—Lila Denning

Kirkus Reviews

2024-05-04
Frightened by the “Other Mommy” in her bedroom closet who asks her, "Can I go into your heart?,” lonely 8-year-old Bela enters into a horrific waking nightmare involving her whole family.

Set in the fictional small town of Chaps, Michigan, near the other made-up places in dread specialist Malerman’s novels, the story involves a deeply troubled family. Bela’s actual mommy has been cheating on her father, Daddo, whose friendliness and good cheer clash with his wife’s dark streak. Wrapped up in their squabbling and work demands, they’ve neglected to pay attention to Bela. Sweetly seductive in the beginning, Other Mommy offers Bela, who blames herself for the whole mess, a solution. They will trade places, with the Babadook-like presence reincarnated in the girl, and the girl...who knows where she’ll go. “Whatever you do, most of all, don’t allow someone else’s meanness, someone else’s cruelty, to get inside of you,” Daddo lectures Bela. Soon enough, a screaming, shape-shifting version of Other Mommy is revealed to everyone, leading the family to run off to an assortment of supposedly safe places and bring in experts in the spirit business to get rid of Other Mommy. Leave it to Mom and Dad to get so caught up in their plight that they miss half of what Bela has to say. As a result of long monologues about secrets and lost innocence and such, the book loses some of its edge. And though Bela may well be little more than a stick figure by design, that deprives the novel of a deeper dimension. That said, Malerman keeps us in his grip, as he did in his best book, Bird Box (2014). The novel isn’t the original that Neil Gaiman’s Coraline is, but it still deserves a place alongside it on anyone’s Halloween bookshelf.

Screwy but scarrry!

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159503381
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	06/25/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	200,461

Read an Excerpt

1

Good night, Daddo!

Good night, Mommy!

Mommy and Daddo leave my room.

I pull the covers up to my chin.

Other Mommy comes out of the closet.

Hi, I say.

I’m so excited to see you again.


2

Bela, Mommy says to me. Eat.

I’m not hungry, I say.

But still. Eat.

I’m not—

I’ve got minutes, only minutes. Then work. Remember? That’s the place I go to make all the little money so we can buy things like food. So, you? Eat the food. Help me out here.

Little money? I ask.

Sometimes it feels that way, hon. Like the money I make is physically smaller than what other people get.

I eat. Mommy always gives me oatmeal. Daddo never gives me breakfast because one time he gave me eggs and sausage and I ate till I threw up and Mommy got mad at him and so now only Mommy gives me breakfast. But Daddo does the dishes.

I love you, Mommy says. Bela?

My mouth is full of oatmeal.

Say I love you too, Mommy says. Don’t make me ask you to say that, ’kay?

’Kay.

I love you, Bela.

Love you too.

What’s on your mind? she asks.

Nuthin’.

But there is something on my mind. I’m looking at the recycle bin.

Bela, Mommy says. Eat.

Where does it go? I ask.

Where does what—

But she looks to where I’m looking.

Are you seriously asking me about recycling right now?

I nod. She looks impatient.

I don’t know where it goes, she says.

Is it a better place?

Better place than what?

Than where we are?

Mommy looks at me the way she does when I say something that surprises her.

I don’t know what that means, Mommy says. The whole point is that it comes back, as . . . something else, I guess.

Something else.

I think of carnations.

Bela—

But she doesn’t need to tell me again. I eat. Then she’s up from the table.

Be good for your daddo, Mommy says.

When will you be home? I ask.

I don’t know yet. Might be late. I don’t know.

She looks frazzled. That’s the word Daddo uses when Mommy looks like this. She’s wearing her brown leather coat. Her black pants. I don’t have to go anywhere because it’s still summer. Daddo works all the time. Mommy’s schedule is all over the place. That’s how she says it.

Bye, Bela, Mommy says.

Bye.

She leaves the kitchen. Daddo is in the den working already, and I don’t hear her say goodbye to him before she leaves out the front door. I go quietly upstairs to my room. I wait for a second by the table with the flowers in the hall.

Other Mommy is already standing outside my closet doors.

I don’t want her to make the face I think she’s about to make. She gets impatient like Mommy does.

I know she wants to talk about carnations.

I go into my bedroom.

And I wave at her.

And I sit on the end of my bed, where I know she likes to talk.

She’s been coming out of the closet a lot more lately.

She walks over to me now. Sometimes it’s like she floats.

She sits on the bed too. Slowly. Next to me.

And she asks:

Can I go into your heart?


3

The first time I told Mommy and Daddo about Other Mommy they laughed. It was good-­night time and I told Mommy good night and then I said it again and Mommy said,

Why did you say that twice, Bela?

And I said,

I was saying good night to Other Mommy.

They both smiled and their eyes got wide and Daddo made a funny sound like from a spooky movie. Then Mommy’s smile went away and she asked,

Who’s Other Mommy, Bela?

But I was embarrassed. So I said,

I’m tired!

Daddo laughed again and shut the light and they left my room, but I saw Mommy look back once through the crack in the door. Her eyes looked right at mine. Then she and Daddo went to their own bedroom.

Then Other Mommy made the grunting sound she makes when she stands up on the other side of my bed, in the space between my bed and the wall, when she’s been crouched down there on the carpet waiting for them to leave.

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