Victor LaValle's novel 'Lone Women' is infused with dread and horror — and more

"You kept too many secrets," Adelaide Henry says to her parents, early in Victor LaValle's new novel Lone Women. "Look what it cost you."

Her mother and father don't react. They can't. They're both dead, their corpses lying in their bed in the house that Adelaide has just finished dousing with gasoline. She strikes a match, tosses it on the bed, and leaves her old life behind forever.

It's hard to imagine a darker start to a novel, and is indeed infused with creeping