Stone Mad
- Author
- D. M. Pulley
- Narrator
- Emily Sutton-Smith
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 15 December 2026
- Run Time
- 11 hours
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
From the bestselling author of The Dead Key and No One’s Home, comes a thriller about a haunted mansion, a missing girl, and the woman who connects them.
Life fell apart for Mannie Wallace after her daughter’s best friend was abducted from the playground right under Mannie’s nose. Six years later, Mannie is working as an engineer turned insurance investigator and barely holding the pieces of her family together. When an eccentric developer hires her to survey an infamously haunted Gilded Age mansion, Stone Mad Castle, it could be just the thing she needs to get her career and life back on track.
But once inside the abandoned castle, her dream job becomes a nightmare when the motley crew of investigators discovers a dead body in the basement and Mannie starts seeing ghosts. Probing deeper into the mansion, she begins to suspect that Stone Mad’s sinister past may be connected to the little girl she lost. Her daughter, now fourteen and obsessed with true crime, is convinced that girls have been mysteriously disappearing near the haunted house at an alarming rate for more than a century.
Twist follows twist, like the hidden passageways that honeycomb the castle, as Mannie risks everything to unravel the mansion’s secrets and uncover the fate of her daughter’s missing friend. In the end, Mannie must solve the mystery of Stone Mad once and for all … or become the next chapter in its haunted story.
Critics Review
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“Fast-paced, faultlessly written, and engaging, this is a page-turner with a very surprising and plausible twist.”
Publishers Weekly on The Dead Key
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“Feels alive and haunted…Genuine suspense with satisfying surprises.”
Kirkus Reviews on The Dead Key
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“This fascinating, frustrating novel brings a fresh imagining of this world of larceny and murder…A good read.”
Booklist on The Dead Key
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“Pulley weaves threads of hypnotic suspense with the sad strands of a family lost to one another…A contemporary intelligent thriller that can stand with the canon of the legendary Shirley Jackson.”
Amber Cowie, bestselling author of Rapid Falls, on No One’s Home
See more reviews See fewer reviews
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“Disturbing and creepy…Reminds me of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. I loved every second of it!”
Matthew Farrell, bestselling author of What Have You Done, on No One’s Home
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“HGTV meets Stephen King—creepy, spooky fun!”
Mary Doria Russell, author of The Sparrow and The Women of Copper Country, on No One’s Home
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“Stone Mad is a wonderfully spooky and engaging haunted house tale anchored by fascinating historical research. It kept me riveted until the final page.”
Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will
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“Stone Mad is a creeping puzzle box of a novel with mystery and tension that never lets up. Pulley draws characters with beating hearts, and you’ll be helpless not to follow them into the dark.”
Joe Hart, Edgar Award–winning author of Or Else
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“Pulley delivers a modern horror steeped in dark history—a series of child abductions, a heretical cult with a shocking need, and a woman who must face her own demons to stop them … or go mad trying. Atmospheric and psychological, Stone Mad leaves every trope in the dust—I couldn’t put it down.”
Dana McSwain, author of The Perfect Stranger (Connecticut Literary Anthology), nominated for the 2025 Pushcart Prize
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“[In this] creepy gothic thriller…Pulley whips up a menacing atmosphere and explores Mannie’s scarred psyche with aplomb. Readers will be rapt.”
Publishers Weekly
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“Stone Mad, like the fictional house for which it’s named, is a nightmarish puzzle, a nesting doll of carefully concealed secrets. The architectural and engineering expertise reflects the author’s own background, and adds a fresh and fascinating element to the narrative. This eerie and compelling novel is part mystery, part ghost story, and wholly an original thriller that keeps you guessing until the very last page.”
Zoje Stage, USA Today bestselling author of Baby Teeth and Something of a Calling
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“Chaotic, surreal, and deeply disturbing, dedicated gothic fans will relish this one.”
Booklist
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- D. M. Pulley
- Narrator
- Emily Sutton-Smith
- Duration
- 11 hours
- Release Date
- 15 December 2026
- ISBN
- 9798228554986
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Thriller / suspense fiction, Horror and supernatural fiction, Thriller / suspense fiction, Thriller / suspense fiction, Horror and supernatural fiction, Psychological thriller
Synopsis
<p><strong>From the bestselling author of <em>The Dead Key</em> and <em>No One’s Home</em>, comes a thriller about a haunted mansion, a missing girl, and the woman who connects them.</strong></p><p>Life fell apart for Mannie Wallace after her daughter’s best friend was abducted from the playground right under Mannie’s nose. Six years later, Mannie is working as an engineer turned insurance investigator and barely holding the pieces of her family together. When an eccentric developer hires her to survey an infamously haunted Gilded Age mansion, Stone Mad Castle, it could be just the thing she needs to get her career and life back on track.</p><p>But once inside the abandoned castle, her dream job becomes a nightmare when the motley crew of investigators discovers a dead body in the basement and Mannie starts seeing ghosts. Probing deeper into the mansion, she begins to suspect that Stone Mad’s sinister past may be connected to the little girl she lost. Her daughter, now fourteen and obsessed with true crime, is convinced that girls have been mysteriously disappearing near the haunted house at an alarming rate for more than a century.</p><p>Twist follows twist, like the hidden passageways that honeycomb the castle, as Mannie risks everything to unravel the mansion’s secrets and uncover the fate of her daughter’s missing friend. In the end, Mannie must solve the mystery of Stone Mad once and for all … or become the next chapter in its haunted story.</p>
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