Adams Fall by Sean Desmond (First Edition)

With the fall of his senior year at the College upon him, the nameless protagonist of Adams Fall finds himself under the great strain of senior year with a thesis to write, a Marshall to apply for, and a girlfriend to elude. It is a full, but manageable plate for one of "the country's best and brightest."


A resident of Adams house's reportedly haunted B-entry, he is familiar with tales of phantom footsteps, vanished laundry, lurking shadows. But when he begins to find himself the object of the house's cruel attentions his world quickly begins to unravel. As the protagonist's grades slip, so slips his mind.
Into his privileged ivy-league world enters a charming and vindictive playboy from the College's past who relishes reminding the protagonist of the circumstances surrounding the suicide of his first year roommate. When the protagonist is faced with the mutilated body of a woman he had been sneaking around with, he resolves to discover the identity of the ghost in order to put an end to its raging and to maintain his sanity.


Adams Fall is an elegant blend of ghost story and psychological thriller, with a tip of its hat to Henry James.

Sean Desmond graduated from Harvard College in 1995, and is a former resident of Adams House. He now lives in New York City. Adams Fall is his first novel.