Bedbugs

Alex and Susan Wendt are the perfect couple in search of the perfect Brooklyn brownstone - and the house at 56 Cranberry Street is too good to pass up. Sure, the landlady seems a little eccentric. And the creepy handyman drops too many strange remarks about the previous tenants. But the sidewalk is lined with trees and there's a beautiful playground just down the block, where their 3-year-old daughter Emma can play. Many chapters of slow-building dread and paranoia will ensue - think of this as Rosemary's Bedbugs. Alex loves their new home but Susan is less enthusiastic - something about the new place just doesn't feel right, and she's having trouble sleeping. In the mornings, Susan awakens to find drops of blood on her pillowcase -and soon her wrists are speckled with bites. She immediately suspects bedbugs but she and Alex and the landlady search the apartment without uncovering a single creature. Even stranger, Alex doesn't have any bites on his body. You're just experiencing some kind of psychosomatic reaction, he suggests. I've never seen any bugs. Exterminators search the apartment and find nothing. But Susan is convinced she's right - she's seen the bedbugs, crawling over her body, feasting on her flesh, and swarming in incredibly vivid nightmares. As her fear and paranoid build to a fever pitch, the story arrives at its horrific conclusion, in which all of the book's many mysteries are revealed. Can Susan contain the bedbugs before they destroy her family? "Bedbugs" may be the first novel that appeals to both horror/Comic Con fans as well as suburban soccer mums - and it's a great gift for anyone who's ever battled bedbugs in real life. Sleep tight!