FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 8, 2025
The Fourth House Offers a Hauntingly Original Take on Gothic Horror and Psychological Suspense
Watertown, New York – In The Fourth House, author James P. Barker delivers a chilling, immersive novel that fuses gothic atmosphere, psychological suspense, and eerie supernatural ambiguity into an unforgettable experience. Written in the wake of personal loss, the novel transcends genre boundaries to become a postmodern meditation on perception, identity, and the legacy of hidden truths.
Already hailed as “An artfully unsettling tale of the contest between reason and madness. Suspenseful . . . Impressively well crafted . . . Genuinely creepy—and unpredictable, to boot.” — Kirkus Reviews, The Fourth House draws readers into a labyrinth of memory, myth, psychological unraveling, and existential dread.
Set against the haunting backdrop of Alexandria Bay in New York’s Thousand Islands—a region native to the author and steeped in mystery and forgotten opulence—The Fourth House follows Sunny, a young mother plagued by disturbing visions dismissed as peripartum psychosis. When her psychiatrist husband threatens to take their newborn daughter, Rebecca, Sunny flees to a remote riverside village in search of refuge—and answers.
There, she’s drawn to Searchlight, a decaying funeral home turned bed and breakfast that echoes through her fragmented memories. Its halls whisper of tragedy, while its light only reveals what the dark wants you to see. And the townspeople cling to ghost stories they dare not explain, in a story where the line between the real and the imagined is as thin as a candle’s flame.
Blending gothic horror, psychological suspense, and literary mystery, The Fourth House is a narrative puzzle layered with symbolism, foreshadowing, and meta-fictional resonance. Fans of The Haunting of Hill House, Rebecca, and The Others will find themselves immersed in a world where memory deceives, stories distort, and truth is anything but fixed.
A Ghost Story That Transcends
At its core, The Fourth House is not just a ghost story—it is a story about ghost stories: about how we tell them, how they shape us, and how they haunt the very act of perception. For readers who love stories that deepen with every revisit, this is one to remember—and return to.
To further immerse readers in the world of the novel, Barker has created an in-world historical article detailing the tragic and supposedly “true” history of the Searchlight Bed and Breakfast on his popular local history website, MemoryLn.net. This meta-narrative piece, complete with fictional history, can be explored here.
About the Author: Multi-award-winning author James P. Barker, a novelist, screenwriter, and essayist, holds degrees in Psychology and Media Study (concentration: interpretation) from the University at Buffalo. His work explores the haunted intersections of memory, narrative, and the human mind. His essays on storytelling and perception have been cited and used in academic and creative circles around the world. The Fourth House draws from a unique synthesis of narrative theory, philosophy, and neuroscience—blurring the line between literary architecture and lived experience.
Jim also dabbles in history with his popular Facebook page, You Haven’t Lived in Watertown, NY, if— and its accompanying website, MemoryLn.net.
Visit him at jamespbarkerwriter.com.
The Fourth House will be released on September 30, 2025. It will be available in paperback and eBook formats via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and numerous other platforms worldwide.
For review copies, interviews, or further information, please contact: Jim Barker at jim@memoryln.net.
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