1970s
70s
A01=Maile Chapman
ADHD
Alzheimer's
Author_Maile Chapman
autobiographical
Category=FBA
Category=FK
Category=FKW
Category=FM
Category=FQ
Category=FS
Category=FXM
demons
eq_bestseller
eq_fantasy
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
family
fiction
gothic horror
grief
Horror
horror novel
Las Vegas
literary fiction
memory
occult
Pacific Northwest
paranormal
surreal
Tacoma
Washington
Product details
- ISBN 9781644453797
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 135 x 208mm
- Publication Date: 20 Apr 2026
- Publisher: Graywolf Press,U.S.
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In a rambling split-level house on the outskirts of Tacoma in the 1970s, a young girl is preoccupied by the anomalous phenomena she reads about in magazines: alien visitations, ESP, pyramid power, the Bermuda Triangle. Meanwhile, she and her stepbrother, thrown uneasily together by disaster and divorce, grow increasingly convinced that a malevolent presence lives in their house, and they develop elaborate strategies to avoid it.
Years later, Mandy is living in Las Vegas in a modern townhouse caring for her mother who is in a terminal decline from Alzheimer’s. She works for a real estate company but struggles to focus on her tasks. She takes medication to manage her ADHD, which has her zagging between distraction and obsession, always halfway through some home renovation project. Then, while digging through a box of her mother’s things hoarded in her garage, she sets something loose. Something old and baleful: a demon that soon possesses one of her neighbours, a handyman named TK, further destabilizing Mandy’s fractured powers of concentration. What follows is a gripping and often terrifying story of familial grief in which the past is both elusive and paralyzing, and questions of science and spirit become urgent.
The Spoil, Maile Chapman’s first novel in fifteen years, is tuned in to the most unusual frequencies, bringing us messages from beyond about the deepest mysteries of grief and longing.
Maile Chapman is the author of Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto, a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award and the PEN Center USA literary award. She teaches in the English and Creative Writing International Program at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
