Every year, as the anniversary of 9/11 inches closer on the calendar, Kit Capriol scans the memorials published in the New York Times. It's a simple thing to look up a name and phone number, to reach out to surviving family members who might still be yearning for connection with their lost loved one...to offer assistance. After her husband went down in the North Tower, Kit scraped by as an actress, barely supporting herself and her daughter. But now Zoey is in the hospital, bills are due, and the acting work has dried up. Becoming a medium is almost too easy for someone used to pretending for a living—and desperate clients aren't hard to come by.

Now, though, something has changed. The séances Kit holds in her apartment are starting to feel unsettlingly real, and the intriguing man she met at a local bar could be more complicated than he seems. As the voices of the dead grow louder in her head and the walls of her apartment close in, Kit realizes that despite her daughter's absence, she hasn't been quite as alone as she thought...

The husband of Manhattan actor Kit Capriol, the protagonist of this superior thriller from Smith (If She Were Dead), died on 9/11 before learning Kit was pregnant with their first child. The joy of her daughter Zoey’s birth gave Kit a new chance at happiness, but 14 years later, Zoey suddenly collapsed on a subway platform and hit her head. The resulting brain trauma left the girl in a seemingly irreversible coma. Three years after that tragedy, Kit, who’s short on work and has trouble paying the rent and hospital bills, has turned to scouring the obituaries pages for notices marking the anniversary of a death. She then cold calls surviving loved ones and offers to help them connect with the departed. As Kit fakes messages from the beyond, she begins to suspect that she may be getting some real communications from the dead. Meanwhile, her scam attracts the attention of the NYPD, placing her in legal jeopardy. Smith expertly keeps the plot twists coming and maintains uncertainty about exactly what’s going on. Fans of Sarah Waters’s Affinity will be enthralled.

—STARRED review from Publishers Weekly

THE SUMMONING is just his ninth novel, but it may be the one that truly puts him on the map…. It is one of the most unique books I have read this year.

—The Bookreporter

J.P. Smith’s latest thriller is an exquisite labyrinth of plot twists that will leave the reader questioning the line between life and death long after the final clue is revealed. Vivid characters, a complex and engaging storyline, and Smith’s signature gift of sharing with his readers something far more profound than a finely-crafted page-turner, makes The Summoning one of his finest works.

—Traci Medford-Rosow, USA Today bestselling author of Unblinded.

I love a story with a touch of paranormal, and The Summoning delivers in a suspense novel starring Kit, an out-of-work actress who survives by faking seances for family members of 9/11 victims…until the voices of the dead grow real. A dark and murky slow-burn that will take you by surprise.

—Kimberly Belle, international bestselling author of Dear Wife and Stranger in the Lake.

Available in France as La Médium in Gallimard’s Série Noire imprint, and as a Folio paperback.

Longlisted for the 2021 Massachusetts Book Award.

A conversation about The Summoning can be found here.