As the author of five bestselling thrillers, Emily Carpenter has
earned wide critical acclaim and a devoted readership for her
signature blend of gothic suspense and horror set in the atmospheric
South, where she was born and raised. The former actor, producer
and screenwriter, who grew up in Alabama and lives in Georgia, has
been telling immersive stories all her life, and she’s passionate about
exploring resonant and universal themes in her fiction.
Her sixth novel, GOTHICTOWN, to be published by Kensington on
March 25, 2025, is mesmerizing, sinister, and totally unexpected, as
a seemingly idyllic Southern community turns out to be hiding dark,
deep-rooted secrets from the outsiders it seeks to entice.

When Manhattan restaurateur Billie Hope gets an email soliciting new residents to boost the economy of the little town of Juliana, Georgia, it seems like a dream come true. For $100, she can purchase a spacious Victorian home and leave behind her cramped apartment and the
painful memories of her failed restaurant, starting a fresh new life with her husband Peter and her daughter Mere. Plus, she’ll get a business grant to open a new restaurant in a charming riverside community laden with opportunity. They move quickly and find that Juliana is everything they were promised—a world away from city living, a “gentle jewel” with weather as warm and inviting as its inhabitants. But after settling in the bucolic village, Billie realizes something is off. Its citizens, especially the three founding families known as “the Old Guard,” are so fanatically committed to the town’s well-being that it seems they’ll sweep unpaid taxes, disappearances and even deaths under the rug. And they’re physically affected, with Peter experiencing insomnia and fits of temper as Billie and Mere both suffer from vivid nightmares. Suspicious and paranoid, Billie makes a horrifying discovery that will send her on a race to uncover the truth about Juliana’s secret past—and what the Old Guard will do to keep their secrets buried, and Billie part of their Gentle Juliana forever.

Emily shares some of the novel’s backstory: “As a lifelong Southerner, I’m emotionally and psychologically tied to both the region’s beauty and warmth, as well as its difficult, troubled history. The South’s inherent contradictions are something I constantly grapple with in all my books. With GOTHICTOWN, I wanted to explore the fantasy that so many of us have—of the chance to start over in a place where there’s a real sense of community and belonging. The fun was in imagining what it would be like if the fantasy went horribly, terribly wrong.”
Deadline announced that a GOTHICTOWN TV series is in development at AMC with Abby Ajayi as showrunner.

A note from Emily Carpenter about Juliana in GOTHICTOWN:
“Juliana, Georgia is a fictional town based on smaller areas/towns of Northeast Georgia that were part of the 1829 Georgia Gold Rush prior to the California Rush of the 1840s. The towns of Ball Ground and Allatoona (near present-day Acworth) were in the middle of a lesser gold belt than the major belt in Dahlonega and Helen, GA. The Georgia Gold Rush involved a lottery for citizens and several rich mines produced gold and were subsequently played out. These towns were also in the path of General W.T. Sherman as he marched to Atlanta, destroying every economic asset (cotton mills, coal mines, etc.) he discovered in every town he passed through.”

About Emily Carpenter
Emily Carpenter is a bestselling author of novels of suspense. Her previous novels include Burying the Honeysuckle Girls, The Weight of Lies (which received starred reviews by both Kirkus and Publishers Weekly), Every Single Secret, Until the Day I Die, and Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters, which Publishers Weekly called a “refreshingly modern gothic tale” and Kirkus called “an exciting, gothic-tinged quest.”

Her next novel, GOTHICTOWN, about a couple and their young daughter who accept a too-good-to-be-true offer to start their lives over in an idyllic Southern town, only to find that there’s something very sinister going on, will be published by Kensington in March 2025.

After graduating from Auburn University in Alabama with a Bachelor of Arts in Speech Communication, Emily moved to New York City. She’s worked as an actor, producer, screenwriter, and behind-the-scenes soap opera assistant for the CBS shows, As the World Turns and Guiding Light. Emily is a member of International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters
in Crime. Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, she now lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her family.
Website: www.emilycarpenterauthor.com
Instagram: @emily.d.c
Threads: @emily.d.c
Facebook: @ecarpenterauthor
X: @EmilyDCarpenter

Advance Praise for GOTHICTOWN by Emily Carpenter
“Just the right amount of creepiness to add a scary but not terrifying element to the
promised gothic tale, and the post-pandemic what-do-I-do-now feeling is spot on.”
—firstCLUE
“Bestselling author Emily Carpenter, whose other suspense novels include Burying the
Honeysuckle Girls and The Weight of Lies, weaves a frightening and compelling tale.”
—New York Journal of Books
“This pulse-racing story of a New York family relocating to an idyllic Southern town with a dark
secret is timely, intense, and terrifyingly good.” —J.T. Ellison, New York Times bestselling author
“The Queen of Southern Gothic dominates in Gothictown, an unputdownable feast in which
deeply-drawn characters who inhabit a tantalizingly secretive Southern town play a role in
deadly secrets that link back to the past. Haunting, atmospheric, sexy, wildly vivid, original,
and entrancing, Gothictown has it all, proving Carpenter is the master of balancing all the
ingredients for a reader’s sleepless night of turning the pages.” —Shannon Kirk,
international bestselling author of Method 15/33 and Gretchen
“Emily Carpenter is back, y’all, and with a gothic banger of a story. Welcome to Juliana,
Georgia, a charming and idyllic small town populated with spacious, Victorian homes the
town offers up for a steal and a host of seriously questionable characters. Carpenter’s
talents really shine here: quirky characters that come alive on the page through her voice,
Southern prose, and a sneaky, steady building of tension to claustrophobic proportions.
Creepy in the best possible way, Gothictown is an absolute knockout.”
—Kimberly Belle, internationally bestselling author of The Paris Widow
“Carpenter has a spectacular voice, and I was drawn into this story immediately. With all
the gothic spookiness layered into a suspenseful family drama, this pulse-racing story of a
New York family relocating to an idyllic Southern town with a dark secret is timely, intense,
and terrifyingly good.” —J.T. Ellison
“Troubled waters rise slow, and dark, and sneaky in Emily Carpenter’s Gothictown, a tale of
small-town Georgia treading to stay afloat in the murky wake of a pandemic-era world.
Prepare to breaststroke your way through Carpenter’s latest feat to where the floodwaters
recede, revealing an utterly satisfying conclusion.” —Robert Gwaltney, award-winning
author of The Cicada Tree
“Inviting and atmospheric, this engrossing tale of a charming town hiding a chilling past is
Southern gothic at its best. Carpenter expertly turns up the heat as a seductive offer turns
out too good to be true and dark secrets come to light, raising the temperature until the
plot boils over. I was hooked from the very beginning!”
—Katherine Wood, author of Ladykiller