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I AM THE MONSTER UNDER THE BED
By: Emily Zinnikas
A Novel
St. Martin's Press
September 2026
On Sale: September 15, 2026
320 pages
ISBN: 1250454786
EAN: 9781250454782
Kindle: B0G775ZSPV
Hardcover / e-Book
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Horror
A contemporary horror debut in which a reclusive painter and the only survivor of an unsolved teen massacre returns to her hometown to confront her past, with the help of her childhood boogeyman and the possessed forest that surrounds her haunted house. Something lives under Willa’s bed. As an adult, her fondest childhood memories are of the invisible entity under her bed who taught her how to read. Now thirty-two, Willa Greene is a reclusive but successful painter until a bombshell news reporter exposes her identity as the controversial survivor of the unsolved Rapture Mystery Slayings, a small-town tragedy that splashed across headlines her senior year of high school. Six teenagers died in the woods while Willa walked free, and everyone thinks she did it.
Reporters arrive by the dozens and park themselves on her lawn. When an old classmate calls about a funeral, Willa reluctantly escapes to the last place anyone would look: her sleepy hometown where the possessed forest that stole her friends looms. The trees whistle for her attention, but she knows better than to listen. And the unexplained knocking from the shadows in the basement of her decaying childhood home is honestly the least of her problems.
Once back, her troubled past comes back to haunt tenfold. A past stalker is creeping on her once again, and she resolves to show him the rage of a grown woman. Nights spent stalking her stalker draws Willa to discover a chilling truth - another stalker is behind the stalker, and one of them is determined to destroy her. Her defense will draw her closer to the hungry forest she swore she’d never return to, to the monster at home she chose to forget – and to becoming the villain her hometown has always suspected her to be.
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