A woman moves into a Manhattan apartment with a haunted past—and encounters its ghosts—in this Bram Stoker Award–winning supernatural novel.
In 1861, The Breviary opened its doors on New York's Upper West Side. Designed by an infamous architect in the Chaotic Naturalist style—slanted floors, curved lines, a black church in the parlor—it was uniquely beautiful, and the things that happened inside it were uniquely terrible.
150 years later, Audrey Lucus thinks she's won the lottery when she discovers a cheap room at The Breviary. She's so delighted by the prospect of more space and a break from her boyfriend that she's not deterred even when the doorman tries to warn her off—confiding that the previous occupant, an opera singer, murdered her four children there in the bathtub. Audrey is a self-made person who doesn't believe in ghosts. Besides, this place is comforting—the home she's always wanted. It calls to her and its voice is sweet.
Nightmares. Daymares. She disregards them. But the signs add up. The disheveled old neighbors are strange. They spy. Audrey's acting differently, losing track of time. Her boyfriend wants her to move back. But she's remembering things about her past that somehow connect to this place. She's discovering clues inside the building, about the woman she's supposed to become. All the while, the building wants something. It demands it:
"Build the door . . ."
"Sarah Langan is an audaciously terrifying storyteller, and Audrey's Door practically hums with frantic energy and hair-raising tension." —Tess Gerritsen, New York Times–bestselling author
"Langan's idiosyncratic blending of supernatural horror and character-driven, psychological insight proves captivating and pleasurably bone-chilling." —Booklist
