Lounging in the Shadows

Tarnstead in 1979 is a damp, fog-choked town brimming with sinister secrets and ambitious locals. Ovidia Gable couldn't care less. After an ordinary morning of brewing instant coffee goes terribly wrong - interrupted by a bleeding wall and a screeching aunt - Ovi realizes she is trapped in a thriller, and decides she is entirely opting out of her family's gothic drama. Her solution? Marry Mercer Hayes, a brooding, gigantic outcast rumored to be a dangerous cryptid, just to escape the estate. To the town's horror, Mercer doesn't murder Ovi; he bakes her fresh scones, scrubs the floors, and ensures she never lifts a finger. Told in alternating third-person perspectives between the shameless slacker and her intensely domestic husband, their quiet life thrives. While the hardworking local heroine, Enid, exhausts herself investigating the town's curses, Ovi’s lazy demand to buy a 'quiet, cursed swamp' for her hammock accidentally sits them on a fortune in rare medicinal truffles. Mercer becomes a wealthy tycoon to fund his wife's lounging. But Tarnstead's shadows are restless. With Ovi's fiercely loyal best friend Leta harboring a treacherous secret, can Ovi survive the town's real mastermind without ever having to get out of bed?