Hide

The Amazement Park opened in 1953.

get lost in the fun! posters advertised, and it was true: Crowds surged through the gates in the morning and didn t stumble out again until the sun had set, and spotlights at the exit guided them free. The maps were useless, the You Are Here guides impossible to find. It was a park designed to swallow. Trees loomed over lush grounds. Signature topiary lined every walled and wandering path, adding to the sense of wonder. Roller coasters, swings, carousels, games, houses of love and fun and terror though the house at the very center was always closed for refurbishment.

The park was open from mid-May until early September. whites only was on signs in the early years, heavily implied when such a thing became harder to officially declare. And, for one week every seven years, it was free. The gates would swing wide, and the summer migrant workers and distant relatives of the wealthy townsfolk, normally too poor to enjoy something designed purely for escape, would wander in, wide-eyed. There were no ticket sales, no attendance numbers, just a joyfully packed park.

In 1974, during the free week, a prominent businessman from upstate decided to visit. He hadn t been invited, but he was considering investing since a cousin-of-a-cousin owned the park. He wanted to see the attractions for himself first, though. He brought along his wife and two children and made it a holiday.

Their little girl, five, was never seen again.

One of the migrant workers was arrested for her murder, but the negative publicity left a stain that didn t wash out. So the Amazement Park closed its gates.

Eventually, the rumors died. The plants grew. Nature slowly co-opted the buildings, the rides, the roller coasters. What didn t crumble rusted, and what didn t rust leaned, and what didn t lean sagged under the weight of ivy and neglect.

Somewhere, very close to the center the house that was always closed, where few ever even got, owing to the odd

Kiersten White is the New York Times bestselling, Bram Stoker Award-winning, and critically acclaimed author of many books, including The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein, the And I Darken trilogy, the Slayer series, and the Camelot Rising trilogy. Hide is her adult debut. White lives with her family in San Diego, where they obsessively care for their deeply ambivalent tortoise, Kimberly.

There is nothing creepier than an abandoned amusement park, especially when Kiersten White is writing about it. This book held me captive; I couldn t put it down. Samantha Downing, internationally bestselling author of For Your Own Good

Hide is a claustrophobic thriller choked with weeds, rust, and rot. The game here is not what it seems. The hunt is swift and merciless, and the fear is primal and bestial. Don t pick up this book unless you have time to read it all in one anxious sitting. Stephanie Perkins, New York Times bestselling author of There s Someone Inside Your House

Haunting, startling, unrelenting, and unexpectedly heartbreaking, Hide draws you inexorably in among the thorns and rust, where the monsters are both intimately familiar and horrifyingly unfathomable. Delilah S. Dawson, New York Times bestselling author of The Violence

Equal parts hell-ride thriller and American fable, Kiersten White s Hide runs you through a sinister child s game set in a nightmare amusement park, and it does so with gleeful, fiendish delight. I hung on to this book with bloodless knuckles, and I adored every spine-chilling second. Chuck Wendig, New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Accidents

White pulls no punches in this brilliantly executed thrill ride. Every twist and turn horrified and delighted me in equal measure. Erin A. Craig, New York Times bestselling author of House of Salt and Sorrows

This book will live in your head rent-free. When I wasn t reading Hide, I was thinking about it it s one of those rare books that twists itself into your consciousness. Kiersten White has outdone herself. Victoria Lee, author of A Lesson in Vengeance

A marvelously creepy thrill ride of a book that keeps twisting until the very end. Karen M. McManus, #1 New York Times bestselling author of One of Us Is Lying

The suspenseful plot combines elements of Thomas Tryon s classic