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AudioBook information:
Author: Micaiah Johnson
Narrated by: Emma Ladji
Release date: September 29, 2026
Audiobook Duration: 7 h 29 min
Summary: Award-winning author Micaiah Johnson invites you to Abernathy House.
A house, itself, is nothing. It’s not a shelter until it is sheltering someone. A house is a housefire, waiting for its match. A house is a ghost story, waiting for its death.
At the end of the Civil War, a daughter of the Confederacy made what she thought was an innocent wish: to build a house where nothing bad could happen. But peace came at a price, and one hundred and seventy years later Shantell and her friends are about to discover where all that darkness ended up.
When Shantell’s best friend, Avery, tells her he has inherited a house big enough to make their dreams of a sanctuary come true, she’s too cautious to be optimistic. A lifetime of loss — her father to the Iraq war, her brother to police violence, and her mother to suicide — has taught her cynicism, and even though Avery swears the house has never experienced a tragedy, she goes along expecting everything from black mold to evil spirits.
But not only is the house in better shape than they’d expected, it makes them better too: Shantell’s anxiety stops flaring up; terminally shallow Avery is suddenly capable of deeper emotions; and Tobias, Avery’s older brother and the contractor for the job, even quits chain smoking.
There’s an eeriness to the calm, and it’s almost a relief when they realize they do not walk alone in Abernathy House. If nothing bad has ever happened here, where are all these ghosts coming from? As they dig into the house’s history, Shantell, Avery, and Tobias discover that there’s only one thing worse than a house that’s haunted: a house that desperately wants to be.
Reviews:
A Publishers Weekly Buzz Book
A Reactor Most Anticipated SFF Book
A LitHub Best SFF of September
A Book Talk with Lauren Most Anticipated Book of September
An All Ways Black Most Anticipated Book of Fall
“A brilliant, spellbinding tale of terror that deftly interrogates privilege and generational trauma while scaring your socks off. You’ve never seen a haunted house like this one before.” —Kylie Lee Baker, USA Today bestselling author of Japanese Gothic
“‘No one comes to a ghost story hoping for survivors.’ The Unhaunting is one of the most original, imaginative, and terrifying takes on the haunted house genre I’ve read in a while. Micaiah Johnson has written a novel of unfathomable crimes, privilege, and the buried traumas of our past—that exposes both the horrors of the supernatural and the ones that lurk in our mundane world. Once you start reading, you will not want to put it down!” —P. Djeli Clark, award-winning author of Ring Shout
“Horror fans will love the method of storytelling employed in this book as the reader is routinely invited into the mind of the haunting, which nearly takes over the narration. It becomes a voyeuristic experience as both side of events are clear. This is a unique and fascinating way to tell a haunted house story that will appeal to fans of this trope and genre.” —Booklist
“Johnson breathes new life into an old horror trope in this clever inversion of the classic haunted house story . . . Johnson largely sidesteps ghostly phenomena to keep the focus on her well-developed Black protagonists, each of whom is haunted by past traumas the house exploits for its own macabre purposes… This chiller will be a hit with anyone seeking a fresh take on genre conventions.” —Publishers Weekly
“EVERYONE SHUT UP, MICAIAH JOHNSON WROTE A HORROR NOVEL!!. . . Johnson’s novel discusses race, mental health, and American culture and history, and is a unique twist on a haunted house story.” —Reactor
“[A] perfectly-timed novel that blends the genres of haunted house horror with historical fiction to examine Black American life in the Deep South . . . Equal parts American history, social commentary and ghost story, The Unhaunting beckons to be devoured in one sitting this fall.” —KQED
“The Unhaunting is a book about a house, but it is also about forces rooted in historical injustices. . . A perfectly crafted, nuanced metaphor ripe for interpretation. . . The house [represents] many aspects of the cultural institution of whiteness: white tears, white guilt, the white washing of American history, and the white literary imagination as it is defined by Toni Morrison.” —Malevolent Dark
“When something seems too good to be true, well, there’s probably a reason. In this case, a perfect house isn’t what it seems, and three friends are about to find out its Civil War history.” —Orange County Register
“The Unhaunting charts the liminal middle ground between Shirley Jackson and Toni Morrison, mapping out the unnerving terrain that exists within the bated breath between Micaiah Johnson’s beguiling words.” —Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Ghost Eaters
“A unique twist on the standard “haunted house” trope, Micaiah Johnson’s The Unhaunting honors Shirley Jackson . . . [A]n intriguing, atmospheric reading experience . . . Visit this haunted house. Especially with the upcoming spooky season, it’s worth putting on your to-be-read list.” —Crimespree Magazine
“Anxiety-inducing from start to twisty end, The Unhaunting kept me up all night! As only Micaiah Johnson can deliver, this ingenious spin on the haunted house story explores how privilege, much like Abernathy House, is as mesmerizing as it is cruel, and the price it exacts is nothing short of horrific. Come inside, if you dare.” —Victor Manibo, author of The Villa, Once Beloved
“A twist on the traditional haunted house story, The Unhaunting pulled me in with a great concept, unique storytelling, a haunting that was original . . . Johnson crafts a story that starts with a tried and true concept, but spins in on its axis to give us something fresh and unique, while also terrifying. The author blends the paranormal with history, family drama, and entitlement to give us a haunted tale that definitely surprised me.” —Capes & Tights
“Haunting in its own way, steeped in grief and love and trauma, I really loved it.” —Becky’s Book Blog
About the Author:
Micaiah Johnson is a Carl Brandon Parallax and Compton Crook Award-winning author. Her debut novel, The Space Between Worlds, was a Sunday Times Bestseller, a Locus Award finalist, an Editors’ Choice at The New York Times, and was named one of the best books of 2020 and one of the best science fiction books of the last decade by NPR. Her follow-up novel, Those Beyond the Wall, a timely look at violence during apartheid, was named a Best Book of 2024 by NPR, Reactor, Esquire and LitHub. She received her BA in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside, her MFA in fiction from Rutgers University-Camden, and her PhD from Vanderbilt University.