The new house is meant to be a fresh start for Claire and her family, a move away from the grim threats of declining San Francisco and towards the safe, affluent suburban life she has craved since her turbulent childhood; a step up the law firm ladder for her husband, Tom; a safe haven for their children.

But even as they unpack boxes and hang pictures, Claire begins to realise that something is wrong. The house is hungry – and it gradually dawns on Claire that it’s eating anything that was once alive: fresh cut flowers, wooden furniture, her daughter’s favourite toy. Everything that the house consumes disappears without a trace. Only Claire and Tom, the owners of the house, remember that it ever existed.

As she comes to understand the extent of the house’s power Claire persuades Tom to put it on the market. But they soon discover that the house calls to the worst kind of people: those who will feed it what it most hungers for – human flesh. Unwilling to let it fall into such hands, Claire forms an uneasy alliance with her home. She feeds it cow hearts, hires a decorator to fix it up, and starts to learn its secrets. But when she wakes one night to find a body dumped through the basement window, slowly being devoured, Claire begins to wonder why she and her family were drawn to the house in the first place.

Max Doty's The House That Eats the Dead is a darkly outrageous supernatural horror where The Shining meets Grady Hendrix.