Christopher Ransom

The Birthing House: a Novel Christopher Ransom First edition

A chilling ghost story that is also a tale of exquisite psychological suspense, The Birthing House marks the debut of a writer whose first novel is a terrifying tour de force.

Conrad and Joanna Harrison, a young couple from Los Angeles, attempt to save their marriage by leaving the pressures of the city to start anew in a quiet, rural setting.  They buy a Victorian mansion that once served as a haven for unwed mothers, called a birthing house.  One day when Joanna is away, the previous owner visits Conrad to bequeath a vital piece of the house?s historic heritage, a photo album that he claims ?belongs to the house.?  Thumbing through the old, sepia-colored photographs of midwives and fearful, unhappily pregnant girls in their starched, nineteenth-century dresses, Conrad is suddenly chilled to the bone: staring back at him with a countenance of hatred and rage is the image of his own wife?.

Thus begins a story of possession, sexual obsession, and, ultimately, murder, as a centuries-old crime is reenacted in the present, turning Conrad and Joanna?s American dream into a relentless nightmare.