“Menacing, intricately plotted, [and] intensely disorienting.” ― Booklist Deep in the heat and silence of rural Tennessee, down an untraveled road, sits the forgotten town of Three Summers. Mere miles away, on an overgrown river island, stands the house that once presided over the grand plantation of Angel’s Landing, moss-draped, decrepit. Waiting. Failing crime writer Bradley Ellison and former prostitute Missy Holiday are drawn to this place, fleeing a world turned against them. For Brad, it is work―he must find a compelling story before the true-crime magazine he writes for judges him expendable. For Missy, it is recuperation―four years at "the club" have left her drained. But the price of peace is high, and soon Brad and Missy discover that something hides behind the quiet. Something moves in the night. Something that manifests itself in bizarre symbols and disturbing funeral rites. Something that twists back through time and clings in the dust of the ancient house. A presence they must uncover before their own past catches up with them. "An ambitious first novel full of the mysteries, histories and rituals of a Tennessee town. Full of nightmarish imagery wrapped in elegant prose, this is a strong debut." ―John Langan, author of The Fisherman and Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies “Reading Broyles’s astonishing debut is like discovering a lost horror classic. Not a speck of dust will settle as you turn the pages faster and faster.” ―Scott Thomas, author of Kill Creek and Violet "Buoyed by confident prose and cinematic imagery, this Southern gothic slow burn rewards close attention and will be a sure hit for fans of folklore and the occult." ― Library Journal “Full of great twists and turns that always kept me on my toes.” ―Cari-Leigh Williams, Barnes & Noble “The novel's brooding darkness is made even more ominous by vivid and detailed settings that drip with atmosphere. Perfect for horror fans looking for a beautifully written book.”​ ―Marjorie DeLuca, author of The Savage Instinct “Southern gothic through and through―vivid atmosphere, creepy, and engaging.” ―Danielle Hansard, Westland Public Library “Every once in a while you come across a book that you think might be made for you, and this is how I felt with almost every page of The House of Dust. The novel has all the makings of a gothic classic, but more than this, it provides an engaging story beyond the tropes and allegory, one that is wide open to interpretation.” ―Vicky Brewster, Books Outside the Box “From a slow burn to an almost frantic page-turner―definitely my favorite read of the year so far.” ―Levyn Lagerqvist, Science Fiction-Bokhandeln Noah Broyles was born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee. He started out writing in a notebook, upgraded to a typewriter, and finally graduated to a laptop. At the age of fourteen he sat down to write his first novel and has never stopped. He has a degree in finance/economics from Carson-Newman University. I got off the interstate to commit suicide. I was supposed to interview a police chief in Jackson about a carjacking cold case, but my tire blew out with thirty miles to go. The delay killed the appointment, and the trouble I had swapping tires revealed my own inadequacy even more. The car rode unlevel on the spare, droning the prospect of another failed investigation into my bones. Heat pressed through the sunroof, pounding memories of my fiancée’s screaming face through my sweaty scalp. Both those pillars of my life―collapsing. When I saw the next off-ramp, I put on my signal. It was one of those dead, pointless exits in rural Tennessee that serves perhaps a dozen people a day. Left was the interstate underpass. Right was blank road. I wanted a quiet place to do it. I went right, out into the wilderness, leaving the world and all its weight behind. But the weight followed me. It was the end of April, but outside the grimy glass, the afternoon trees wore the tired green of late summer. I searched for a shady gravel patch along the shoulder. The broken driver’s-side window control clicked beneath my forefinger as the rising pressure crushed open a primal place in my brain filled with flames and billowing smoke and the searing smell of raw oil. My eyes watered. I tried to still my finger but couldn’t. The clicking only stopped when I saw the sign. It leaned drunkenly among thick honeysuckle at the far edge of the highway. My vision cleared. Buried beneath many spray-painted desecration attempts lay the official black lettering: THREE SUMMERS―TWO MILES. Just beyond the sign, a mouth opened in the wall of the woods, the shrouded access point to the forgotten town. It would do. I turned across the highway and stopped my car amid the brackish twilight. An RIA .38 Special rode in the glove box. I took it out and braced it against my temple. The movements of my jaw, clenching and unclenching, translated along its length into my hand. I coul