THE GUEST BOOK

Nobody is asked their name. Nobody is asked their reason. Everyone is asked if they are hungry. Wren Calloway counts when she is afraid. Right now she is counting dollars: eleven hundred in checking, a job lost in disgrace, and a dead aunts inn at the end of a dead-end road in Vermont. She plans to stay one night. Then, at one in the morning, in the worst storm of the year, a bruised woman and her small son knock three times at the door. Behind them comes a charming husband with a court order, a sympathetic sheriff, a beloved town doctor, and a ledger of two hundred and eleven names that no one is supposed to be able to read. Wrens aunt did not fall down those cellar stairs. Somebody in this house is selling its guests to the men they ran from. And the only clue Ida left is a column of sums that dont add up. Eleven days. One storm. A house full of people whove never told the truth about who they are.