Diavola

by Jennifer Thorne

Genres: Supernatural suspense; Gothic

Synopsis

Jennifer Thorne skewers all-too-familiar family dynamics in this sly, wickedly funny vacation-Gothic. Beautifully unhinged and deeply satisfying, Diavola is a sharp twist on the classic haunted house story, exploring loneliness, belonging, and the seemingly inescapable bonds of family mythology.

Anna has only two rules for the annual Pace family destination vacations: 1) Tread lightly and 2) survive.

Anna never quite managed fit into the family. Her twin brother, Benny, goes with the flow to the extent of practically dissolving, and her older sister, Nicole, is used to everyone falling in line—including her blandly docile husband and two kids—that she is. Not to be. Questioned. Mom seizes every opportunity to question Anna’s life choices, and Dad, when not reminding everyone who paid for this vacation, just wants peace and quiet.

The gorgeous, remote villa in tiny Monteperso offers the perfect place to endure family togetherness. That is, until vacation start going off the rails—strange noises at night, unsettling warnings from the local villagers, and the dark, violent past of the villa itself.


(Warning: May invoke feelings of irritation, dread, and despair that come with large family gatherings.)

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Release date: March 26, 2024

Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

YOUR FLESH AND BLOOD

Anna kicked off the annual Pace family vacation with a lie. It was the only smart move, and she didn’t feel the least bit guilty about it.

Benny had wanted to maintain their usual twin-dependent status by meeting up on Friday and flying together to Florence from Newark, a compromise between New York and Philadelphia, but doing so would have involved her sharing a row with his newish boyfriend for the better part of nine hours, and besides the natural human inclination to avoid torture, Anna had better plans.

So she made her excuses—last-minute client meeting Friday afternoon, stupidly important one, ugh, her agency was such a pain, she really needed this vacation—and Benny rolled his eyes with her, not at her, a crucial difference.

Anna arrived in Florence early Thursday morning and stayed alone in a shoebox Airbnb apartment near Piazza Santa Croce.

In the afternoon and into the evening, she sat on a precariously thin half-moon balcony with her sketch pad stretched across her bare legs, trying to capture the soul of the skyline, until the wine she’d been drinking blurred the lines, and she set it all aside and went out to simply stroll.

La passeggiata, they called it. She liked it—the flow, the freedom, the cacophony of the people around her, and beauty absolutely everywhere she looked.

Friday was travel day for the rest of the Pace family, and although the Florence airport was miles away, she woke up feeling their arrival like a to-do-list item she’d been trying to ignore, a psychic tap-tap-tap on the shoulder. Hey! Remember us? Your flesh and blood? Don’t you care at all?

Mom and Dad’s flight from Ohio, via a changeover in Gatwick, landed at 7:28 A.M. Central European Summer Time—they’d forwarded her the itinerary—then they’d wait for Benny and the New Boyfriend, whom they’d not yet had the pleasure of meeting, and shuttle them in their rental car south into the Chianti region to the medieval hilltop village of Monteperso. Nicole and her circus would roll into town around the same time and make their own way over to the villa. A joyful, almost complete, Pace family reunion would be underway by lunchtime.

Anna doubted her absence would be felt all that acutely, despite what they were sure to say to her later.

She hit the galleries on Friday. L’Accademia. The Uffizi. Molto bene. Overwhelming in the best way.

She’d been careful not to tell the family when her fictional Saturday flight was arriving, which gave her time for a brioche and an espresso and one more stroll Saturday morning before she grabbed her shoulder bag and hauled herself out of Florence. She hopped a southern train into the town nearest Monteperso, then sat on a curb in the station’s parking lot and booked an Uber.

The driver, a young guy with mussed, curly hair and a sparse mustache, spoke a little English.

“You sure you want to go to Villa Taccola?” he said as he cut off another car on a sharp right turn out of town. “I could take you … anywhere else.”

“Should I be worried?” Anna asked, watching the landscape scroll past her window, one lovely postcard after another. Skinny cypress and squat olive trees, tidy lines of vineyard hills, beautifully crumbling walls, villages that had been clinging to their rocky brown hillsides for a thousand years or more. The occasional jarring modern sight: a massive satellite dish on a house, a fence plastered with ads for a summer funfair.

Her brain would filter those images out later, she knew. People tended to remember only the pretty parts of their vacations, and Anna was no different.

“No, no, I’m joking,” the driver said, but he watched her through the rearview mirror, eyes tracking downward, and she wondered idly whether it was him she should be worried about. She envisioned the possibility. Uber driver with a few of his local buddies, a different car parked down a dirt track, waiting to find her alone.

“Where do you live?” she asked him in Italian. Dove abita?

In the mirror, his eyes slid back to the road, just in time for him to avoid oncoming traffic driving too centrally on a switchback.

Her heart thudded with the near miss. She bit her lip, adrenaline pulsing upward.

He replied in Italian. “Not far from where you’re staying.” ...