Gothictown

by Emily Carpenter

Genres: Gothic; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

In an immersive Southern Gothic with echoes of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, a restauranteur lured by pandemic-era incentives moves her family to a seemingly idyllic small town in Georgia, only to discover a darkness lurking beneath the Southern hospitality and sun-dappled streets...

Welcome to gentle Juliana, where you can have it all…if you pay the price.

The email that lands in Billie Hope’s inbox seems like a gift from the universe. For $100, she can purchase a spacious Victorian home in Juliana, Georgia, a small town eager to boost its economy in the wake of the pandemic. She can leave behind her cramped New York City rental and the painful memories of shuttering her once thriving restaurant and start over with her husband and her daughter. Plus, she’ll get a business grant to open a new restaurant in a charming riverside community laden with opportunity. It seems like a dream come true…or a devil’s bargain.

*A Publishers Marketplace BUZZ BOOKS Selection*


A few phone calls and one hurried visit later, and Billie, Peter, and six-year-old Meredith are officially part of the Juliana Initiative. The town is everything promised—two hours northwest of Atlanta but a world away from city living, a “gentle jewel” with weather as warm as its people. Between settling into their lavish home and starting her new restaurant, Billie is busy enough to dismiss any troubling signs…

But Billie’s sleep is marred by haunting dreams, and her marriage with Peter is growing increasingly strained. Meanwhile the town elders, all descended from Juliana’s founding families, exert a level of influence that feels less benevolent and more stifling day by day.

There’s something about “Gentle Juliana”—something off-kilter and menacing beneath that famous Southern hospitality. And no matter how much Billie longed for her family to come here, she’s starting to wonder how, and if, they’ll ever leave.

For readers of Stacy Willingham, Sarah Langan, Ashley Winstead, and Jess Lourey, a bewitchingly foreboding story about sacrifice, privilege, family, guilt, and the vengeful ghosts of a haunted past – from the bestselling author of Burying the Honeysuckle Girls.

Release date: March 25, 2025

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 368

Sample

The email sat two-thirds of the way down my depressingly sparse inbox. ENTREPRENEURS, REMOTE WORKERS, PROFESSIONALS, the subject line read, then farther down in the body, The Gentle South Beckons You . . .

I paused the Netflix documentary playing in the background, another pyramid-scheme-turned-cult series where the perpetrators of whatever scam were now sitting in a jail cell. It was my jam these days, two years after New York’s pandemic lockdown, comfort-watching shows about appalling scammers with God complexes. They reassured me that sometimes the bad guys really did lose. That the people taken in by them, the victims who had suffered major professional and personal loss, could rise from the ashes.

I tossed the remote aside and focused on my laptop. The email was from someone named Bonnie St. John. Probably junk, but what the hell. My Lower East Side restaurant, Billie’s, had been closed long enough that I wasn’t even getting any emails related to the business anymore. And I certainly wasn’t getting any from Mom. So yeah, even spam had started to look interesting. I opened it.

Below the text was a picture of a quaint town square. It was straight out of a storybook—courthouse, bronze statue surrounded by ancient oak trees, rows and rows of street lamps. Below that was a link. I clicked on it, and it took me to the home page of Juliana, Georgia. The site was clean, modern, and professionally laid out, showing more photos of the town. Wide sidewalks, cute shops, and window boxes bursting with flowers. Gorgeous Victorian houses, all crisply painted in pastel shades. American flags on every corner.

My heart did a little flip as I reread the paragraph. One hundred dollars for a house? That couldn’t be right. Although I had just recently read an article in the Times about how several cities across the U.S. and Europe whose economies were suffering in the wake of the pandemic were luring people to move with offers like this. Topeka, Kansas, offering low-cost apartments to remote workers who wanted to relocate. A town up in South Dakota handing out grants to small business owners. Even a medieval village in northern Italy giving away castles for free. Times were hard. People were getting creative. But this was beyond.

I clicked through the rest of the town’s website. There was the elementary and high school, the river spanned by a picture-perfect bridge that looked like it was straight out of a movie set. A list of services in the county. The population of Juliana, Georgia, was predominantly white—no surprise there—but the numbers showed a fairly racially diverse community. Not only that but, included with the rainbow variety of Christian churches located within a fifteen-mile radius, there was a Jewish temple and a Unitarian church.

My heart beat faster, and every nerve pulsed beneath my skin. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Replies were to be directed to a generic email address, [e-mail]. I hit the link and typed out one sentence.

I sent it. Almost instantly a reply pinged back.

It was signed Dixie Minette, Mayor.

My heartbeat ratcheted up to a full-blown patter. I typed my cell number and hit send, the whooshing sound giving me another wave of goose bumps.

“Peter,” I said over my shoulder.

“Hmm?” My husband was on his laptop over at the dining room table he used for his office.

I looked at him, then over at Meredith. She was sprawled out on the rug, my old Joy of Cooking open in front of her, finger on a page, mouthing words. She’d started reading early, at four, and showed little interest in typical picture books. Ramsey lay beside her, the entire length of his substantial, orange cat body in contact with hers.

The goose bumps were now covering me head to toe. This was the way I’d felt when I’d first gotten the idea for Billie’s. When I’d first envisioned the menu, the atmosphere, the exact space I wanted in Alphabet City. I’d had this same hair-raising sense of rightness.

“Do you know anyone in Georgia?” I asked Peter.

“State or country?” He didn’t look up from his laptop.

“State.”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

I carried the laptop over to the table and stood beside him. His reddish-brown hair was mussed, and his round tortoiseshell glasses had slid halfway down his freckled nose. He smelled like my guilty pleasure: the phosphate-packed laundry detergent I bought furtively at the CVS on Orchard, the one with the scent of a chemical version of a grassy meadow. His scent surrounding me, my heart going wild, and every cell in my body on full alert, I felt like I was about to blast off into space.

A small town. Our own house. A perfect childhood for Mere and . . .

Another restaurant for me.

Peter was grinning at me. “Billie. What?”

I pointed at my screen. He read the email.

“Huh.”

I leaned over, clicking around the Juliana, Georgia, website for him. “I mean, look.”

He took it in. “It’s a pretty town. I’ll give it that.”

“Check this out.” I navigated back to the ad, which they’d given the spot of honor right in the middle of the home page. I pointed to a row of adorable Victorian houses. “A hundred dollars, Peter. One hundred dollars.”

He looked doubtful. “Not for one of these. No way.”

“Yes, for any of these houses. And look. The river that runs through the middle of the town. There’s canoeing, kayaking, fishing. A historic mill.” I clicked tabs maniacally. “Here’s the library. Medical center. Once-a-month farmers market.” He was nodding. “And here”—I paused for effect—“is Juliana Elementary School.”

He stared at the screen, brown eyes blinking over his glasses. The lenses were smudged. It had been a long day. Back-to-back clients. My husband worked incredibly hard. He saved lives. For the past two years, he had been making a difference in this traumatized world, while I poured all the energy I’d previously used at the café into helping Mere navigate her schooling. She’d gotten off to a rocky start. Her pre-K year had ended abruptly, the following year of kindergarten had been mostly remote, and for first grade, I’d decided to homeschool her.

She needed extracurriculars, but she didn’t love organized gymnastics or soccer or dance. What she loved was being outdoors. It had been an exhausting two years of trying to keep my daughter physically as well as mentally engaged, and this spring hadn’t made it easy. It had been a brutal few months, cold and rainy, with most of the inside playground options permanently shut down after the pandemic. On rare nice days we invariably ended up taking the long subway ride to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

She had no interest in the kids’ Discovery Garden there, with the preplanned activities and simple crafts and workers who talked to her like she was a baby. No, my six-year-old wanted to explore every other space: the Rose Garden, the Shakespeare Garden, and the Cherry Esplanade. She didn’t want anyone telling her anything about the trees or flowers. She only wanted to take off her boots or sandals and run away from me as fast as she could, weaving through the trees and smelling every plant, whether it bore blooms or not. She liked to create intricate fairy houses in the roots of trees with acorns and rocks. She liked to lie on her back on the grass and see if she could convince the ants that she was a fallen branch.

“She wants to connect with the earth,” Peter said. “Which is actually the best thing anyone can do for their mental health.” But eventually she was going to need more than the Botanic Garden, and I was afraid I couldn’t provide that for her. I’d spent all my restaurant savings on buying a house for my mom, and now, while certainly not broke, I wasn’t exactly flush with cash. The cost of connecting with the earth in New York was too high for us.

Interrupting my thoughts, Peter pushed his laptop aside and pulled mine closer, navigating around the site for himself. I glanced over at Mere. Ramsey had jumped up on the back of the sofa and was staring at me as if he knew that something monumental was happening.

“They’re giving up to thirty thousand dollars to people who open a brick-and-mortar business in town.” He showed me some fine print on one of the tabs. My heart started to race again. I’d been so excited about the hundred-dollar house thing that I hadn’t even registered that detail. “Kind of hard to believe. Thirty K?”

“Cities spend a lot more than that to attract manufacturers. They campaign for Amazon warehouses and car plants. Why wouldn’t they offer it to regular people?”

He looked unconvinced.

“Peter. Think about it. I could open another café. Just breakfast and lunch this time, so I could be home when Mere gets out of school.” I was talking so fast, I was practically stumbling over my words. “We could own an actual house, free and clear. Think about it. No mortgage in our thirties.”

“Except I’m forty,” he said.

“Whoops.” I sent him a wry grin. “So old, but still so sexy.”

“We could get some land,” he said. “For Mere.”

“Have another baby,” I said. “Or two. We could afford it down there, easy.” Our eyes met. “Our kids would grow up with grass and trees and sky. A place to run. A place to grow old and have a family of their own one day.”

As he looked up into my eyes, I could feel our synchronicity kicking in. We were both drawn to the idea of putting down roots in a place that was more affordable with more room to breathe. Peter’s parents were gone, his mom from uterine cancer and his dad from a heart attack. Losing his parents in his late teens was the thing that had propelled him into psychology and then family counseling.

We’d always had the essential things in common—both raised in New York, both preferred to spend our money on travel—or a house for my mom, in my case—rather than clothing or jewelry or cars. What we’d never said out loud, but what I was now seeing so clearly was that both of us were still searching for our true home. A place to ground our family, hopefully for generations to come.

Peter bent over my computer again. “I’m just wondering how it’ll go over with my clients—”

“You could still see them online, right? Most of them have gone remote anyway, and I know there are all sorts of waivers now for seeing out-of-state clients. And for getting licensed to practice in multiple states, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Yeah, no. You’re right.” He seemed to be thinking about something else.

“What?”

He leaned back. Looked up at me with a thoughtful expression. “I don’t know, it just . . . Doesn’t it feel kind of suspicious? I mean, out of the blue, this random email pops up, offering a hell of a lot of money for us to relocate to this amazing town?”

“I mean, sure. Maybe. But I think it’s legit.”

He shook his head, something obviously bothering him.

I felt my face grow warm and folded my arms. “Just say what you want to say, Peter.”

He shook his head. He wasn’t about to tread on that particular land mine, so I said it for him.

“You think this is the same kind of thing Mom fell for.”

He softened. “I’m not trying to be a jerk, here, Billie. Honestly.”

I sighed. He had every reason to be skeptical. Mom’s situation had started off the same way—a out-of-the-blue email soliciting her participation in a new, exciting adventure! And he and I both knew how it was going to end. The cult documentaries on Netflix left little room for doubt.

It had been annoying at first, the ancestry hobby she’d gotten into when I’d moved her out to the house in New Jersey, but I hadn’t been seriously worried. My mother and I were close enough, as close as Sibyl Sheridan Lewis allowed anyone in her life, so I figured if there was a problem, I’d know.

I was an only child. When I was young, my parents worked a series of low-paying, grueling jobs and were exhausted most of the time. We never went out to eat. We rarely even gathered around a table. For us, meals were survival, not social occasions. Then Dad died my first year in college. After graduation, I moved back to the city and got a job serving at a popular Northern Italian bistro in Soho. And, strangely enough, that’s when I found the key that unlocked my mother.

Mom would show up at the restaurant, usually unannounced, and eat whatever I put in front of her. If things were slow, I’d join her, and we’d talk. At last—in those stolen moments, both of us picking at a plate of osso buco or pumpkin risotto—my mother let me in. She told me everything. All about her hardscrabble childhood, the dreams she’d had then given up. Her love for my father, ground to dust by their never-ending financial hardship. Over a meal, I finally got to know my mother.

And so, the idea for Billie’s was born.

She was delighted throughout the whole process of opening the restaurant, my number one cheerleader. And when the restaurant started doing real numbers, I wanted to make it up to her, give her the house my father could never afford. Now I realized it had been a bad idea. The pretty Dutch colonial cottage I bought for her out in New Jersey was just far enough away that she got lonely. Then at some point, when I wasn’t looking, her harmless hobby took a turn.

Online she discovered she had Irish ancestors who’d settled in Maine in the 1850s and had started a religious sect. A Quaker offshoot they dubbed The Gathering. The church only lasted a decade or so, but apparently the small town the group had built, though now abandoned, was still standing in western Maine in a desolate corner of White Mountain National Forest.

A couple of days after the lockdown, along with other descendants connected to the original group who met online, Mom decided to sell her house. It went for almost double what I’d paid for it. She moved up to Maine, to a patch of land they’d all chipped in to buy so they could revive The Gathering. From what little she shared in her sporadic letters, the new commune members spent their time either growing their food, fixing up the decrepit buildings in the town, or tracing every twig of their family trees.

Members of The Gathering were only allowed use of phones in case of emergency and computers to send supervised emails. Predictably, they were encouraged to donate whatever spare cash they had to the guy in charge, a person called Uncle Jimbo. If I had wanted to argue her out of going there, the fight was over before it began. One day, she was in Jersey, the next she was gone. I had a few handwritten letters from her, a few generic emails that sounded like PR blurbs, but no phone calls. Me and Peter and Mere weren’t enough for her. And there was nothing I could do but accept it and let her go.

Now I squared up to Peter and took a deep breath. “You think it’s a scam.”

He hesitated. My husband, always so careful with his words, wasn’t going to allow this to escalate into an argument. It wasn’t his style.

“I’m saying it sounds really, really good. I’m saying”—he broke into a grin—“maybe we sleep on it, do some checking around, make sure the reality matches up with the fantasy.”

“And if it does, would you . . . will you actually consider it?”

His fingers brushed my arm, tugging me closer to him. I pivoted until he could pull me onto his lap. He nosed into my neck, inhaling my scent.

“I’ll always consider anything you want me to.”

“Thanks for not beating up on my mom.” Even though I did just that, if only to myself, almost constantly these days.

He kissed my neck then looked into my eyes. “We’re all just looking for home, Billie. Your mom. You and me and every person in this jam-packed disaster of a city. That’s all any of us really want.”

I was quiet, thinking for the first time that maybe I could forgive my mother. If she’d been searching for the feeling of home, I guess I could understand. Because that word—home—the way Peter said it, it lit a fire in me, too.

One week later, after roughly two dozen phone calls and a hasty flight down to Georgia, we were running out of reasons not to move forward. At least, Peter was. I was already 100 percent on board.

Juliana was not the Deep South of moss-draped oaks and perpetual humidity; it was the temperate South, blue-skied and softened with a caressing breeze, thick with green trees and flowers and climbing vines. One of the first people we met was Bonnie St. John, the woman in the mayor’s office who called both Peter and me “hon.” She had informed us in her smokey voice that there were currently only two places to eat in town—a barbecue place called Pig Out that was only open on the weekends, and the Dairy Queen. If I chose to open a place like Billie’s, my old restaurant, I would be the only breakfast and brunch game in town. If things went well and I decided to expand my hours and menu, I’d be the only upscale dinner spot as well.

Peter and I drove down a network of streets lined with picture-perfect Victorian houses. Several I recognized from the website, all offered with the same unbelievable $100 price tag. It had been pure luck finding the house outside of town, the one sitting on twelve acres. When I’d called Bonnie to ask about it, she told me that the house and acreage were the property of the town and weren’t included in the hundred-dollar offer.

The scrappy New Yorker in me, unwilling to let anyone tell me what I could and could not do, kicked in. I explained how we’d always wanted land, how my daughter adored the outdoors. I told her I planned to plant vegetables and herbs we’d be using at the restaurant and how that would be an even bigger draw to the place. Bonnie told me she’d see what she could do.

Back at the hotel, we’d met with three couples who’d made the move, asking them every imaginable question we could think of. Peter stayed maddeningly quiet. I knew he wasn’t trying to tamp down my enthusiasm. He was just in his head, weighing all the pros and cons, managing expectations. Allowing himself the room to make a fully informed decision. But I had made up my mind.

It had happened earlier that day during our tour of the town. I’d seen a bronze statue in the square and made Peter park so I could get a closer look. The statue was a little girl, the original Juliana, according to the plaque, the daughter of the founder of the town. She appeared to be about Mere’s age, was barefoot and wearing an old-fashioned dress with pantaloons. Her right arm was outstretched, a butterfly resting on her finger as if it had just alighted there.

A little girl who loved nature. It felt like a sign.

Now, back in our apartment in New York, as Peter and I bumped around each other in our cramped kitchen clearing the dinner dishes, the silence between us weighed on me. The next words we spoke were going to change everything, I knew, no matter which way we decided to go.

I ran water into a cast iron skillet, feeling shaky with nervous energy. I was about to burst, sick to my stomach. Was Peter waiting for me to say something? Was he reluctant to break the bad news that he didn’t want to move? Or was he still truly undecided?

“The suspense is killing me,” I finally said, as lightly as I could manage.

Peter wiped the last dish and put it in the cupboard. He turned and leaned against the counter. I could feel him watching me as I worked on the skillet.

“How long has it been?” he asked. “Since Billie’s closed? Since your mom left?”

“Two years and one month.”

I didn’t even have to count. I’d closed the restaurant on March 15, 2020, the day before Mayor de Blasio shut down all the restaurants in the city except for takeout or delivery. Two days later, my mom had called with the news that she’d put the house on the market and was moving to Maine. The two events had happened so closely together, it was like they’d converged in my mind as one single, colossal disaster.

So, yes. Two years and one month to the day since I’d pulled the plug on my greatest career success, sending my employees home with boxes of food and admonishments to apply for unemployment ASAP. Two years and one month since I’d ceased to be Billie Hope, restauranteur, and had become Billie Hope who stayed home, made pancakes in a cramped kitchen for her daughter, and watched way too many lurid Netflix documentaries. Two years and one month since I’d had an actual conversation on the phone with my own mother.

“What?” I asked him.

“I’m trying to figure out how to word this.”

“Just say it.” I let the pot clatter in the sink and faced him.

He sighed. “Okay. You can’t just do this for yourself, Billie. You know that won’t work.”

“Who said this was just for me? I’m thinking about Mere, too. And you. This would be better for all of us.” It was mostly the truth.

“It’s not going to be the same, opening a restaurant in a small town. You’re not going to have the critics and movie stars and ballplayers or whoever coming in and out every day.”

I laughed. “I know that, Peter.”

“I’m just . . .” He shook his head. “I’m worried it won’t be the same for you.”

“Look, I liked that part about Billie’s—the glamour—I won’t lie,” I said. “But it’s not the part I miss the most. It’s not the part I truly loved about the place.”

“You could always start another restaurant in New York.”

“I could, with a slew of investors. And you could go on seeing people traumatized by living in shoeboxes for the past few years. And Mere could grow up playing kickball in the hallway outside our apartment door. But is that what we really want?” I cocked my head. “Is that what you want?”

He didn’t miss a beat. “I want what’s best for my family. I want my wife happy. My daughter safe.”

“Ninety-six percent of Juliana High School’s graduating class not only attend, but graduate from, a four-year college,” I said. “And the crime rate is practically nonexistent.”

He did that laugh-head shake thing he always did when he knew I’d won an argument. “Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, I think I’m up for it. I’m up for moving. As long as you know what you’re getting into.” He smiled at me, his clear brown eyes dancing through his glasses, freckles standing out against his flushed skin. I giggled somewhat nervously, and then he did, too. The next moment, we both burst into giddy laughter.

“Oh my God,” I said. “What the hell did we just decide?”

“We’re leaving New York.”

“We’re leaving New York,” I repeated, the words really hitting me. “I mean, just saying it—”

“—feels right?” he supplied.

It did feel right, in a kind of heart-swallowing, don’t-lookdown way. Finally, after all the heartbreak and fear and grief we’d experienced in the past few years, something was going our way. We were being proactive. Bold. Taking steps to ensure our family had a future.

Just then, Mere, in rainbow cloud pajamas and wet, side-parted blond hair hanging over one eye, appeared in the doorway. “What are you guys laughing about?” Ramsey brushed past her, then leaped up onto the counter and surveyed us three. King of the Kitchen.

“Shoo!” I waved him off the counter, and he let out a crotchety meow, swan-dived through the opening onto the living room floor, and skidded out of sight.

Mere ran to Peter, hugging his legs ferociously. “What’s so funny?”

I scooped her up, burying my nose in her wet blond hair. She smelled like vanilla and mint toothpaste.

“You remember when Daddy and I went on a trip the other day and you stayed with Jane?”

She nodded. “You went to Georgia.”

“Right. Well, we were wondering if you’d like to move down there. There’s a small town called Juliana that looks really nice, we thought. Like a good place for our family.”

She frowned. “How small?”

“Way smaller than New York. It would be like living in a little village but also the country.”

“Like the park, but everywhere?”

I nodded. “Yeah, it’s like a big park. With fields, meadows. A river with a mill and a bridge. It’s got woods, too. Forests.”

She laughed at that. I laughed, too, because the description sounded almost too idyllic to be real. “Does that sound good, babe?”

“We can talk about it as much as you like,” Peter said. “We can answer any question you have.”

“I don’t have any questions.” Mere grinned. A few of her bottom teeth were missing, and for some reason, the sight made my heart twinge. “No questions!” she repeated louder. Now she was bouncing up and down in my arms. “I already know the answer is yes! I want to live in the country!”

“Makes decisions like her mother,” Peter said wryly.

“With her exceptionally trustworthy gut,” I said, then addressed Mere. “You promise you won’t miss the subway rats and the cockroaches?”

“I won’t miss them at all!” She leapt out of my arms, ran into the living room, and started bouncing around the furniture. This riled Ramsey up so much he started racing across the tops of the furniture like a motocross bike with orange fur. We followed Mere. Peter picked her up and tossed her in the air, and I turned on some music. The Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women” blared even though I knew I’d catch hell later from at least two neighbors. I didn’t care. We were all laughing and dancing, giddy with the idea of a completely new life, with the thought of the freedom of cutting ties to this grim, gray city.

From the mantel over the fireplace my phone trilled. I picked it up. Opened the email from [e-mail] and read it.

“Peter,” I said. “Peter, Peter, Peter!”

He and Mere both stopped dancing and looked at me.

I held up my phone. “Bonnie from the mayor’s office wrote back. The town council members have decided to let us buy the twelve acres and the house. They’ve sent a contract.”

His eyebrows shot up. Mere looked from him to me.

“We’re really doing it,” I said. “We’re about to be the owners of our very own home. We’re moving.”

Exactly two weeks later, on a perfect Friday afternoon, Peter, Mere, and I rolled into Juliana, Georgia.

Peter had driven the nine hundred miles from Manhattan to northwest Georgia in our newly purchased, gnat-encrusted Subaru Forester pulling the rented U-Haul behind it at approximately fifty miles an hour. Although my husband could navigate the MTA or hail a taxi with his eyes closed, behind the wheel he apparently turned into a ninety-year-old grandma, in no hurry at all. I didn’t mind. Mere and Ramsey were cuddled in the back seat, Ramsey having declined his crate somewhere back in New Jersey. Peace permeated the car. We would arrive at our destination in exactly the right amount of time. Even the journey to our new home was heaven.

Juliana was only a couple of hours northwest of Atlanta, but it might as well have been a hundred, the way the town seemed totally separate, insulated and cut off from the sprawl of the big city. After exiting I-75, it took a good twenty minutes of winding, two-lane country roads past boiled peanut and tomato and peach stands to get to the . . .