The Militia House

DEBUT The narrator of this debut novel is a 22-year-old corporal responsible for a small group of U.S. soldiers on FOB Z, a base in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He’s unprepared for his responsibilities, but he realizes everyone else is unprepared too. Days on the base tick by with a mixture of boredom, low-grade anxiety, and reflections on cultural differences between the American and British troops with whom they share the base. When the Brits tell the Americans about an allegedly haunted building just past the boundaries of the base, the lure proves too tempting for the Americans to resist. What follows is a slow descent into a psychological hell that only war could conjure, one that will follow Corporal Loyette long after he has left the battlefields of Afghanistan. The terror in this novel is gothic and ominous but will nevertheless keep readers enthralled.