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The Chrysalis

By: Brendan Deneen
Narrated by: Will Damron
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Publisher's Summary

Spawned by Brendan Deneen’s own experiences relocating to a New Jersey suburb with his young family, The Chrysalis combines chills, thrills, and a literal monster in the basement with commentary on love, marriage, and impending parenthood.

Welcome to the dark side of suburbia.

Barely employed millennials Tom and Jenny Decker have to grow up fast when they lose their cheap Manhattan apartment. Leaving “the city” is hard, but the blow is softened when they stumble upon a surprisingly affordable house in the suburbs.

For Tom, the bills, the mortgage, and Jenny's unexpected pregnancy add up to terror. He's not ready for this kind of responsibility.

Then he finds the thing in the basement. It makes him feel like a winner even as it scrambles his senses. A new job soon has him raking in the big bucks—enough that Jenny can start making her entrepreneurial dreams come true.

The Deckers' dream home conceals more than one deadly secret. As Tom's obsession with the basement grows, Jenny realizes that to save her family, she must expose everything. Before it destroys them all.

No one ever really wants to grow up…but sometimes behaving like an adult is the only way to survive.

"Creepy, powerful, wonderfully twisted."--New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry

©2018 Brendan Deneen (P)2018 Macmillan Audio

Critic Reviews

“Deneen's latest book catapults him to the front ranks of today's most exciting new genre writers. An old-school homage to genre classics, The Chrysalis uses themes of family responsibility and substance abuse, madness and artistic vision to create an unsettling mood that builds to a horrifying crescendo. This is a must-read.”—Nate Kenyon, Bram Stoker Award finalist, author of Day One

"All the more frightening because Deneen makes you care before he starts the scares. A powerful, engrossing, and relentless book.”—Chet Williamson, author of Robert Bloch’s Psycho: Sanitarium

“Deneen wonderfully concentrates the anxiety and emotional strain of trying to live up to the responsibility that comes with a growing family. The problem here is, part of that family is growing behind the spare fridge in the cellar. Deneen hatches all the darkest fears of having ‘one on the way.’”—Bracken MacLeod, author of Stranded

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