The Haunting of Moscow House

By: Olesya Salnikova Gilmore

Length: 14 hrs

Publisher's summary

In this elegant gothic horror tale set in post-revolutionary Russia, two formerly aristocratic sisters race to uncover their family’s long-buried secrets in a house haunted by a past dangerous—and deadly—to remember.

It is the summer of 1921, and a group of Bolsheviks have taken over Irina and Lili Goliteva’s ancestral home in Moscow, a stately mansion falling into disrepair and decay. The remaining members of their family are ordered to move into the cramped attic, while the officials take over an entire wing of grand rooms downstairs. The sisters understand it is the way of things and know they must forget their noble upbringing to make their way in this new Soviet Russia. But the house begins to whisper of a traumatic past not as dead as they thought.

Eager to escape it and their unwelcome new landlords, Irina and Lili find jobs with the recently arrived American Relief Administration, meant to ease the post-revolutionary famine in Russia. For the sisters, the ARA provides much-needed food and employment, as well as a chance for sensible Irina to help those less fortunate and artistic Lili to express herself for a good cause. It might just lead them to love, too.

But at home, the spirits of their deceased family awaken, desperate to impart what really happened to them during the Revolution. Soon one of the officials living in the house is found dead. Was his death caused by something supernatural, or by someone all too human? And are Irina and Lili and their family next? Only unearthing the frightening secrets of Moscow House will reveal all. But this means the sisters must dig deep into a past no one in Russia except the dead are allowed to remember.

©2024 Olesya Salnikova Gilmore (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"With graceful, captivating prose, Gilmore weaves a haunting tale of post-revolutionary Russia, about confronting the ghosts of a painful past to find hope for the future. Eerie and atmospheric, romantic and heartrending, The Haunting of Moscow House is a gorgeous historical gothic." - Rachel Harrison, national bestselling author of Black Sheep

“Elegantly haunting, Olesya Salnikova Gilmore weaves a tale of secrets, the heartrending fall of an empire, and a family torn asunder into an elegiac portrait of sisters confronting the past that can never be buried, steeped in Gothic dread. Curl up with hot tea and keep the candle lit, as you enter the world of a captivating storyteller whose writing is deft as rain and shadows on her titular mansion.” – C.W. Gortner, author of The Romanov Empress

“Chilling and exquisite…a captivating tale of love, strength, and sisterhood that will make you forget that the rest of the world exists while you are reading it.” - Kristen Loesch, author of The Last Russian Doll