No Road Home

Fram (The Bright Lands) touches on generational curses, anti-queer bigotry, and religious trauma in this tense, supernaturally tinged locked-room thriller. By the time Alyssa Wright brings her new husband, Toby, and his feminine-presenting seven-year-old son, Luca, to her family’s isolated Texas compound, the mood is already jittery. Alyssa’s televangelist grandfather, Jerome, has been making increasingly dire end-of-days predictions, and someone has been splattering cryptic threats in vivid red paint across the main house’s bedroom doors. When Jerome is discovered stabbed on the roof just as a powerful storm cuts off communication with the outside world, Alyssa’s relatives turn their suspicions toward Toby. As he struggles to prove his innocence, and to keep Luca out of whatever nefarious plan the Wrights seem to be hatching for him, long-repressed memories of Toby’s late sister start to surface. Meanwhile, Luca claims to see a ghost stalking the halls. Fram lends authenticity to the behaviors and motivations of his sprawling cast, keeping readers glued to the page as the complex plot unfurls—though certain late-stage reveals don’t feel entirely fair. Still, this ambitious swing for the fences connects more often than it misses. Agent: Melissa Danaczko, Stuart Krichevsky Literary. (July)