Welcome to House

Welcome to Eva's house, where no one leaves quite the same as they arrived...if they leave at all.

Fifth-graders Maxwell Smith and Eva Byrdlime, he a charming athlete and she a bookish misfit, neither have nor want anything to do with one another...that is, until Max's mother pressures him to pay Eva's house a visit and try to befriend her. But amongst the maddness of the house--from the Ferris wheel in the backyard to the obnoxious talking spider to the looming threat of Eva's over-controlling mother who strictly forbids "outsiders"--Maxwell not only grows closer to Eva, but finds himself in a kinship he's never had with anyone. But Eva's house finds a way of drawing dark things out of all who enter it, and a voice in Maxwell's mind telling him to stay is becoming more and more impossible to distinguish from his own thoughts...

Years later, an older Maxwell Smith writes to a young author, AC Lenore, and recounts to her the day that changed his life forever. His flippant demeanor and jarring method of storytelling make it difficult to tell if he's telling the truth or just saying whatever he believes will keep Lenore reading. Did he ever truly make it out of Eva's house, or is he just trying to drag Lenore in with him?

A modern take on the myth of Persephone, Welcome to Eva's House also draws inspiration from Gothic and Romantic classics, such as Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights. It won a Silver Key in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards in 2019.