Bedbugs

Alex and Susan Wendt are the perfect couple in search of the perfect brownstone-and they find their dream house in the heart of Brooklyn Heights. Sure, the landlady is a little eccentric, and the handyman drops some cryptic remarks about the previous tenants. But the rent is so low, it's too good to pass up! Big mistake: Susan soon discovers that the brownstone is crawling with bedbugs... Or is it? She awakens every morning with fresh bites, but neither Alex nor their daughter Emma has a single welt. Exterminators search the property and turn up nothing. Neighbors insist the building is clean. Susan fears that she's going mad-but as the mysteries deepen, a more sinister explanation presents itself: She may literally be confronting the bedbug problem from hell. An understated horror story filled with loving references to Rosemary's Baby and other classic tales of urban paranoia, Bedbugs will keep your skin crawling into the wee hours of the night. Ben H. Winters is the New York Times best-selling author of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (Quirk, 2009). His most recent book, the YA novel The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman (HarperCollins, 2010), was nominated for an Edgar Award.