The Harrowing

Ghost Story

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Murderati Ink

Mystery, Mystery: Thriller

December 9, 2011

Available in: e-Book

The Harrowing
by Alexandra Sokoloff

— Bram Stoker and Anthony Award Nominee for Best First Novel —

Baird College’s Mendenhall echoes with the footsteps of the last home-bound students heading off for Thanksgiving break, and Robin Stone swears she can feel the creepy, hundred-year-old residence hall breathe a sigh of relief for its long-awaited solitude. Or perhaps it’s only gathering itself for the coming weekend.

As a massive storm dumps rain on the isolated campus, four other lonely students reveal themselves: Patrick, a handsome jock; Lisa, a manipulative tease; Cain, a brooding musician; and finally Martin, a scholarly eccentric. Each has forsaken a long weekend at home for their own secret reasons.

The five unlikely companions establish a tentative rapport, but they soon become aware of a sixth presence disturbing the ominous silence that pervades the building. Are they the victims of a simple college prank taken way too far, or is the unusual energy evidence of something genuine—and intent on using the five students for its own terrifying ends? It’s only Thursday afternoon, and they have three long days and dark nights before the rest of the world returns to find out what’s become of them. But for now it’s just the darkness keeping company with five students nobody wants and no one will miss.

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Alexandra Sokoloff's Bio

I’m the Thriller Award-winning and Bram Stoker and Anthony Award-nominated author of the Amazon bestselling crime and supernatural thrillers The Harrowing,The Price, Book of Shadows, The Unseen, The Space Between, and the Thriller Award-nominated Huntress/FBI thriller series: Huntress Moon, Blood Moon, Cold Moon, Bitter Moon, and Hunger Moon. The New York Times Book Review has called me “a daughter of Mary Shelley” and my novels “some of the most original and freshly unnerving work in the genre.” I’m a California native and a graduate of U.C. Berkeley, where I majored in theater and minored in everything that Berkeley has a reputation for. After college I moved to Los Angeles, where I’ve made an interesting living doing novel adaptations and selling original thriller scripts to various Hollywood studios. In my stories I like to cross the possibility of the supernatural with very real life explanations for any strangeness going on, and base the action squarely in fact. The Unseen is based on real paranormal research conducted at the Duke University parapsychology lab, and Book of Shadows teams a Boston homicide detective and a practicing Salem witch in a race to solve what may be a Satanic killing. The Space Between, is an edgy supernatural YA about a troubled high school girl who is having dreams of a terrible massacre at her school, and becomes convinced that she can prevent the shooting if she can unravel the dream. I also have written paranormal romance (The Shifters,Keeper of the Shadows) and the non-fiction workbooks Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, based on my internationally acclaimed workshops and blog. I live in Los Angeles and in Scotland, with Scottish crime author Craig Robertson. When I’m not writing I dance: jazz, ballet, salsa, Lindy, swing — I do it all, every chance I get.