The Serenity Nearby

Veronica Hockmeier’s relationship with her girlfriend/PhD supervisor is on the rocks. A graduate student has died by suicide in her English Department. And her eating disorder has returned with a vengeance. All Veronica wants to do is get out of town for a weekend, and when her paper is accepted at an academic conference on Emily Dickinson, in Dickinson’s hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts, Veronica takes this as a good sign.

On the way there, she is greeted with calamity after calamity: an accident on the road, a person from her past, and what appears to be the ghost of a graduate student in her hotel room. When a friendly hotel worker named Bo Wu shows her some kindness, Veronica can’t help but fall for the tall woman with a winning smile-even if she does have a creepy collection of items dead patrons have left behind.

When Veronica’s passport goes missing and another body turns up at the hotel, she becomes trapped in a nightmare she can’t escape from-not without Bo’s help.