21 magical science fiction and fantasy books hitting shelves in Fall 2021
By Lacy Baugher
Fall 2021 release: The Last House on Needless Street
Catriona Ward’s The Last House on Needless Street is a dark thriller about mental illness, trauma, and survival, hope, and resilience. Equal parts disturbing and oddly heartwarming at times, it is the story of a strange family and the mysteries that bind them all.
Ted Bannerman still lives in the house he grew up in, at the end of Needless Street, obsessing over his upsetting childhood, trying to parent Lauren, the young girl with anger issues he says is his daughter, and take care of Olivia, his cat who feels she has been called by God to protect Ted.
But when Dee Walters, convinced that Ted kidnapped her daughter eleven years earlier, moves in next door to try and investigate, her presence upends his life, kicking off an ever-deepening mystery that moves between past and present, and contains plenty of shocking twists.
The official synopsis describes the story as follows.
"In a boarded-up house on a dead-end street at the edge of the wild Washington woods lives a family of three. A teenage girl who isn’t allowed outside, not after last time. A man who drinks alone in front of his TV, trying to ignore the gaps in his memory. And a house cat who loves napping and reading the Bible. An unspeakable secret binds them together, but when a new neighbor moves in next door, what is buried out among the birch trees may come back to haunt them all."
The Last House on Needless Street is available on September 28.