The Drowning Kind

by Jennifer McMahon, Imani Jade Powers

Genres: Ghost; Women's Fiction; Supernatural suspense; Horror

Synopsis

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Invited and The Winter People comes a chilling new novel about a woman who returns to the old family home after her sister mysteriously drowns in its swimming pool…but she’s not the pool’s only victim.

Be careful what you wish for.

When social worker Jax receives nine missed calls from her older sister Lexie, she assumes that it’s just another one of her sister’s episodes. Manic and increasingly out of touch with reality, Lexie’s mental state has pushed Jax away for over a year. But the next day, Lexie is dead: drowned in the pool at their grandmother’s estate. When Jax returns to the house to go through her sister’s things, she learns that Lexie was researching their family’s and the house’s history. And as Jax dives deeper into that research, she discovers that the land holds a far darker history than she could have ever imagined.

In 1929, thirty-seven-year-old newlywed Ethel Monroe hopes desperately for a baby. In an effort to distract her, her husband whisks her away on a trip to Vermont, where a natural spring is showcased by the newest and most modern hotel in the northeast. Once there, Ethel learns that the spring is rumored to grant wishes, never suspecting that the spring takes in equal measure to what it gives.

A haunting, twisty, and compulsively readable thrill ride from the author who Chris Bohjalian has dubbed the “literary descendant of Shirley Jackson,” The Drowning Kind is a modern-day ghost story that illuminates how the past, though sometimes forgotten, is never really far behind us.

Release date: April 6, 2021

Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press

Print pages: 336

Sample

Prologue
July 18, 2000

“The dead have nothing to fear,” Lexie said.

The two of us treaded water, lips blue, teeth chattering.

My sister wore her new light-blue bikini, the color of the sky, and I had on one of her hand-me-downs, the fabric so worn that it was sheer in places.

“So when we play the Dead Game, we keep our eyes open, no matter what.” Her face was as serious as serious got. “Swear it? Swear you’ll keep them open?”

I nodded.

“Even if you see Rita?” she asked.

“Shut up, Lex.”

“She’s down there, you know. She’s waiting for us.”

“Shut up!” I swam away from her, closer to the edge of the pool.

She laughed, shook her head. “Don’t be such a chicken.” Then she seemed to feel bad, to take pity on me maybe; to remember I was only nine. She put out her hand, pointer finger extended. “Come on,” she called. I swam back to her, reached out, crossed her finger with my own. “The X girls,” she said.

“Now and forever,” I finished. Then we hooked our fingers together, squeezed, and let go.

“If she comes for one of us, she’ll have to take us both,” Lexie said.

“Lex!”

“On three,” she said. “One. Two. Keep your eyes open, Jax. I’ll know if you cheat.”

I took the deepest breath I could.

“Three!”

We put our faces under and floated, suspended in the dark water like twins in the womb.