Heartwood Box

Stranger Things meets The Lakehouse in Heartwood Box, a dark, romantic YA suspense novel with an SF edge from New York Times bestselling author Ann Aguirre.

In this tiny, terrifying town, the lost are never found.

When Araceli Flores Harper is sent to stay with her great-aunt Ottilie in her ramshackle Victorian home, the plan is simple. She’ll buckle down and get ready for college. Life won’t be exciting, but she’ll cope, right?

Wrong. From the start, things are very, very wrong. Her great-aunt still leaves food for the husband who went missing twenty years ago, and local businesses are plastered with MISSING posters. There are unexplained lights in the woods and a mysterious lab just beyond the city limits that the locals don’t talk about. Ever. When she starts receiving mysterious letters that seem to be coming from the past, she suspects someone of pranking her or trying to drive her out of her mind.

To solve these riddles and bring the lost home again, Araceli must delve into a truly diabolical conspiracy, but some secrets fight to stay buried…

“..will appeal to YA Stranger Things fans, and the myriad cross-genre elements will draw readers of all kinds.” —Booklist

“A unique and genre-bending tale; there are elements of a historical romance, a science fiction ghost story, and a spy thriller.”—School Library Journal