The House in the Pines

The House in the Pines follows Maya, a young woman in Boston who is unraveling—sleep-deprived, withdrawing from illicit Klonopin, and suddenly confronted by a viral security video from her hometown of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In it, a woman collapses and dies mid-conversation with Frank Bellamy, the same man Maya once suspected in the sudden death of her best friend, Aubrey, years earlier.

Driven by dread and guilt, Maya returns to Pittsfield to investigate. What she finds isn’t a simple crime but a pattern: missing time, an impossible “cabin” in the woods, a key that seems to pull people into trance, and a legacy of psychological experimentation tied to Frank’s father. As Maya fights to reclaim her own memory and credibility, she must decide whether she’s paranoid—or the only witness to a method of murder that leaves no fingerprints.

• Listeners who love psychological thrillers with unreliable perception, memory gaps, and “is it real?” dread.
• Fans of small-town mysteries where the past resurfaces through clues, documents, and buried relationships.
• Readers drawn to stories about addiction, recovery, and reclaiming agency after manipulation and trauma.

Ana Reyes is a novelist with an MFA from Louisiana State University. Her work has appeared in several literary journals, and she teaches creative writing to older adults at Santa Monica College. The House in the Pines is her first novel.