What Grows in the Dark

In Evans’s suspenseful horror debut, a pair of fraudulent paranormal investigators are called in to examine a real haunting. Sixteen years ago, Brigit Weylan’s older sister, Emma, was found dead in an apparent suicide outside the woods where the girls once played. Soon after, Brigit left town for good. Now she lives on the road with her friend, Ian, conning people by faking supernatural happenings and then swooping in as experts. Ian, who films their so-called investigations and uploads them to YouTube, believes they’d have a hit show on their hands if they could just get a network pickup. Then Brigit gets a call from Emma’s former girlfriend, now a police detective, informing her that two teens have disappeared in the same woods where Emma died, followed by strange, seemingly paranormal occurrences. Though Brigit doesn’t want to return home, Emma offers to pay, and she can’t resist the money. Upon arrival, she and Ian find that the teens’ disappearance is directly connected to Emma’s death. The more they investigate, the more the forest comes alive—and it wants Brigit. Evans gets the pacing of this chiller just right. Skin-crawling and unpredictable, this is sure to please horror fans. Agent: Erica Bauman, Aevitas Creative. (Mar.)