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A young girl sets out to defeat the evil spirits inhabiting her home in this “thrilling…Coraline-like” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) illustrated middle grade adventure perfect for fans of The Beast and the Bethany and Margaret Peterson Haddix's The Strangers.Lily is used to hospitals—she's spent more time in them than out of them thanks to her recent health issues. But when her mother goes into labor, her parents drop her off at her grandmother's house and rush to the hospital without her. Lily doesn't want the new baby to replace her, and she certainly doesn't want to be sick anymore. Most frustrating of all, she forgot to pack Willo, her favorite toy. Under her grandma's not-so-watchful supervision, Lily sneaks back home to get Willo. Expecting to find an empty house, she is surprised to find her parents there. But something isn't right... They look just like her mom and dad until she gets closer and sees their coal black eyes. And they refuse to let her in—it's their house now. With the help of some surprising new friends that she meets in her garden, Lily is determined to beat these shadowy replacements and be reunited with her real parents. But is she strong enough to triumph?

In middle age, Lin is diagnosed with a chronic disease. Yearning for change and solitude, she finds affirmation in the life of the eighteenth-century French writer Isabelle de Charriere. Seeking an explanation for her condition, Lin examines her own stressful childhood, torn between her father's love and her mother's jealousy. She describes her unrequited passion in her twenties for an older man - a relationship that would be repeated thirty-five years later in therapy.In the course of this eroticised transference her feelings of love alternate with rage, and the power imbalance between patient and therapist is laid bare. She emerges with a new sense that her emotional anomalies, like her physical ones, must be accommodated, without blame or bitterness.This is a searing tale from a patient's perspective of therapy, loneliness, and resolution.