Inherited Game

Dr. Amara Holloway studies antebellum history. Her sister, Seraphina, was just another carefree tourist who vanished near Halloween. The last place Seraphina's phone pinged? The Manor of Ages, a sprawling, elite-owned haunted house famous for its realistic terror—and its annual body count.The police dismiss the disappearance as another seasonal tragedy, but Amara knows the phone ping is a breadcrumb. Breaking into the manor, she finds Seraphina's phone hidden in a secret passage leading to a slave-era tunnel, a chilling discovery that links the current disappearances to a history her books never dared to publish.She finds an unlikely, troubled ally in Detective Ben Riley, a young cop secretly fighting an internal affairs review for racist remarks, who realizes Amara's case connects to a horrifying pattern he'd seen in cold files. Riley is a man battling a dark past, descended from the very enforcers who carried out the plantation's original cruelty.As Amara and Riley uncover proof—a grotesque, mummified "e;trophy of the hunt"e; hidden in plain sight—they are ambushed by the Manor's owners: the powerful and ruthless Ashworth family. Amara is captured and Riley is forced to shoot a celebrity client, branding himself a fugitive.Now on the run, Riley's only hope is the compromised intelligence of a traitorous Ashworth daughter. The clock is ticking down to Halloween night. Amara and Seraphina are the prized victims on a horrifying menu, and they are about to become the main event in a centuries-old aristocratic tradition: The Inherited Game.