Home Before Dark – Riley Sager

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager is a masterfully crafted psychological thriller that intertwines familial legacy, grief, and the supernatural. Twenty-five years ago, Maggie Holt and her parents fled Baneberry Hall—a dilapidated Victorian estate in Vermont—after her father published House of Horrors, a memoir detailing alleged hauntings. Now an adult and skeptic, Maggie inherits the house after her father's death and returns to renovate it and sell it.

As Maggie reenters the halls of Baneberry Hall, she experiences disturbing echoes of her father's narrative: strange sounds, flickering lights, and unsettling relics. The locals who once inspired the book now resent its fame, and closed-mouth neighbors seem to hide more than they share. Alternating between Maggie’s present-day investigation and chapters from her father’s memoir, the novel builds tension through dual perspectives.

When a hidden passage reveals the long-missing bones of Petra Ditmer—a girl central to the original story—the line between fiction and reality shatters. Maggie unearths painful truths: suppressed memories, betrayal, and a night that changed everything. The final act delivers a twist that redefines the narrative: what seemed supernatural is human, and Maggie must reconcile her own role in the tragedy.

Rich in atmosphere, with suspense that accumulates slowly and rewards patiently, Home Before Dark lives in the unsettling space between myth and memory. It’s ideal for readers drawn to haunted-house mysteries, unreliable narrators, and emotionally charged revelations.