Haunted Doll House is an imprint of Agape Editions that publishes full-length print books.
As our name suggests, we aren’t afraid of the dark: we live there.
We want your horror stories, your mysteries, your dark sf/f, your genre-resistant novels about the ecstasies, traumas, and terrors that took you to the very edges of yourself.
Summer Girls, by Letitia Trent
Forthcoming, Spring/Summer 2024
Recent high-school graduate Chelsea is determined to escape her alcoholic mother and to take her beloved younger sister, Mariah, with her. After Chelsea’s graduation, the girls spend summer in a seaside town with their with their no-nonsense Aunt Bobbie. As Chelsea makes clumsy forays into adulthood, Mariah grows increasingly close with a warm and nurturing married couple – a pair of artists who eventually reveal themselves to be predators. This coming-of-age summer proves deeply traumatic for both sisters, in different ways.When the FBI knocks on Chelsea’s door fifteen years later, it’s because Mariah has joined a cult responsible for violent crimes; it’s evident that Mariah is in serious danger. Chelsea must now revisit and dissect all the painful, messy details of that long-ago summer. Understanding Mariah’s choices may be Chelsea’s only chance to help extract her sister from the cult – before its elusive leader, Agape, persuades Mariah to take actions that will drive the sisters permanently apart.
Barely Half in an Awkward Line, by Jay Halsey
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Barely Half in an Awkward Line weaves together photographs — featuring desolate rural and urban landscapes, thought-provoking and often-bizarre portraits of masked subjects, and abandoned homes — with writing on poverty, chemical abuse, homelessness, violence, class struggle, and the mishaps of destructive love and misguided choices. This prescient, genre-resistant, multimedia work of art examines the insecurities and terrors derived from the habitual traumas of struggling to find humanity within an inhumane society.
Vourdalak & Other Stories, by Mihael Pelin
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Set against a grim backdrop of Rustbelt decay and dry northern forests still scarred from centuries-old fires, these weird tales interrogate the phenomena of living damnation. What forces converge upon a lost soul — or within it — to motivate the perverse perseverances of human interaction? Why do certain energetic bodies seek out contact with others, even when harm has long since become the only potential outcome of such troublesome synergies? These stories draw from the language and symbols of Inquisitorial documents and depth psychology, from trauma theory and grimoires of dark magic.
Who Casts No Shadow, by Mihael Pelin
When newlyweds Calvin and Margreatha are separated immediately after their honeymoon, each is surrounded by physical and spiritual dangers they must face alone, connected to one another only through love, letters, and dreams. Together but separately, they explore the parameters of the self, discovering how much we can share with and be known by a romantic partner, without losing or surrendering who we are — and what aspects of the self must remain for the individual alone.
This sea-faring story of gothic romance also confronts the fact that spiritually powerful people are not always morally righteous, and that spiritual power in the wrong hands can be a destructive or degenerative force. Ultimately, this novella provides a complementary tale to the horrors of the short story collection, which is why we are pleased to be releasing them in a single volume.
The Voluptuaires, by Alais Escobar Henri
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One scorching Colorado summer day, Jonathan and Felix Forrester — twentysomething brothers from an affluent Denver family — invite a young woman up to their luxury apartment as a sort of prank. But the three connect quickly — and precariously — through their shared desire to explore the limits of their lust, power, and pleasure. As the external world burns with war, disease, and natural disasters, their refuge in the cool, posh apartment unspools into something more insidious. As Alais Escobar Henri ruthlessly interrogates the intersections of vulnerability and privilege, of danger and desire, the voluptuaires’ dreamlike chrysalis soon becomes a hatching ground for buried traumas to re-materialize.
Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How To Knock, by Hillary Leftwich
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This genre-resistant collection examines grief, violence, heartbreak, and the universal challenge of living in a body that is always vulnerable. In this greyscale kaleidoscope of the familiar and the uncanny: muted voices shout, people commit to devastating choices, and mundane moments are filled with silent hauntings. A sleep paralysis and a séance of voices long dead, this collection illuminates both our own darkness and our strength, revealing how love can emerge from the most impossible of conditions.
Agape Editions 
