The Agony House

  At the bottom of the page, a long thread of water flowed. It must be some kind of animated GIF, she assumed; but when she hovered the cursor over it, it made little splashes—and a warm gold highlight told her that this was a link.

  She double-clicked it.

  This book has been a group effort from day one—and it never could’ve come together without a veritable host of folks including (but by no means limited to) the following great people: Cheryl Klein, the editor who helped me develop The Agony House in the first place; editor Nick Thomas, who dove right in to help me pull it together and push it over the finish line; talented and speedy artist Tara O’Connor, who did such a killer job of the comics; art director Phil Falco, who shepherded all the visuals with aplomb; and my outstanding agent Jennifer Jackson. Many thanks to them, and to everyone else who’s helped me along this spooky little road.

  is the author of I Am Princess X, her debut young adult novel, which earned three starred reviews and was a YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. She is also the author of more than a dozen adult science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels, including Boneshaker, which won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. She lives in Seattle, WA, and can be found online at cheriepriest.com and @cmpriest.

  is a comic maker and illustrator currently residing in the New Jersey wilderness. When she’s not drawing or teaching comics, she’s probably working on an illustration of some sort. She is the author of Roots and The Altered History of Willow Sparks. You can find more of Tara’s art online at taraocomics.com

  Text copyright © 2018 by Cherie Priest

  Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Tara O’Connor

  All rights reserved. Published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC and the LANTERN LOGO are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Priest, Cherie, author. | O’Connor, Tara, illustrator. Title: The agony house / Cherie Priest ; illustrated by Tara O’Connor. Description: First edition. | New York : Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic Inc., 2018. | “This book contains 45 pages of interior comic illustrations in addition to the text”—Publisher. | Summary: Seventeen-year-old Denise Farber, her mom and her stepfather are moving back to New Orleans, into the Argonne house, which is over 100 years old, and really showing its age, but which her mother plans to turn into a bed-and-breakfast—but old houses have histories, and sometimes ghosts, and a mysterious old comic book that Denise finds in the attic may hold the answer to a crime and the terrifying things that keep happening in what she thinks of as the “Agony” house. Identifiers: LCCN 2018016855| ISBN 9780545934299 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 054593429X (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Ghost stories. | Haunted houses—Louisiana—New Orleans—Juvenile fiction. | Murder—Louisiana—New Orleans—Juvenile fiction. | Comic books, strips, etc.—Juvenile fiction. | Detective and mystery stories. | New Orleans (La.)—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Mystery and detective stories. | Ghosts—Fiction. | Haunted houses—Fiction. | Murder—Fiction. | Cartoons and comics—Fiction. | New Orleans (La.)—Fiction. | LCGFT: Detective and mystery fiction. | Ghost stories. Classification: LCC PZ7.1.P76 Ag 2018 | DDC 813.6 [Fic] —dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018016855

  First edition, October 2018

  Jacket art © 2018 by Tara O’Connor

  Jacket design by Phil Falco

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-93435-0

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.