Happy People Don't Live Here

In this darkly funny gothic tale, a reclusive mother and her saturnine daughter move into a haunted building brimming with eccentricsand secrets.Just past the edge of summer, Alice and her daughter, Fern, arrive at the Pine Lake Apartmentsa former sanatorium occupied by an ensemble of peculiar neighbors and a smattering of ghosts. Among the living: the Mermaid Lady, who performs in a nightclub fish tank; the buildings handyperson, moonlighting as a medium; and an awkwardly charming professor of medieval studies. Fern alone is acquainted with the undead, who pass like troubled clouds through the apartments, humanity mostly lost ages ago. For the determinedly private Alice, Pine Lake seems the perfect place at the edge of the world to hide herself and her daughteruntil the day Fern finds a dead body in the dumpster.Intent on solving the mystery of this discarded corpse, Fern eagerly puts her encyclopedic knowledge of detective novels to good use while dodging warnings from her increasingly paranoid mother. She soon comes to realize that within the strange tapestry of Pine Lake residents, nothing is ever quite as it seems. Her investigation digs up long-buried secrets, including her mothers, that implicate each of her neighbors . . . and conjures a new one from beyond the grave.The hotly anticipated debut novel from master of the fantastic (Roxane Gay) Amber Sparks, Happy People Dont Live Here is an unforgettable portrait of familywhether by birth or by chance or by choiceand the sometimes dangerous myths we make to keep ours together.