The House on
Vellantry Street
A mystery. A disappearance. A woman who refused to let the record stay buried. And two people who found each other in the middle of all of it.
— Mathew Kracken
About the Book
What the House Has Been Hiding
When Maren Voss rents a crumbling Victorian townhouse on Vellantry Street, she comes with a purpose: to document the disappearance of Iris Calloway, the retired librarian who vanished eleven years ago without a trace. The case went cold. The house went empty. The street learned to stop looking at the windows.
Her neighbor across the street is Ezra Fenn — the man who reported Iris missing, who has carried the weight of that morning for eleven years, and who has been waiting, without knowing it, for someone to come and look.
What Maren finds in the archives of the Harwick Historical Society is not just a cold case. It is a pattern of theft, coercion, and erasure stretching back decades — and a woman who had been building a record of it, alone, until someone with something to lose made her disappear.
This is a story about what happens when you refuse to let things stay buried. About the stubborn, sometimes irrational, sometimes revolutionary act of caring when caring costs something. And about two people who find each other in the middle of all of it.
Genre
Gothic HopePunk Romance
Author
Mathew Kracken
Publisher
Manifest-Success Press
Themes
"Haunting, tender, and impossible to put down."
Read Inside
An Excerpt
The house had been empty for eleven years
The house had been empty for eleven years when Maren Voss moved in.
She knew this because the realtor told her, nervously, as though it were a confession rather than a fact. Eleven years. A number long enough to accumulate its own weight. Long enough for the garden to go feral and the gutters to fill with the compressed residue of a decade of autumn and the neighbors on Vellantry Street to stop looking at the windows.
"The previous owner," the realtor said, and then stopped.
"What happened to her?" Maren asked.
"She disappeared."
Maren stood on the front step and looked up at the house. It was a Victorian, narrow and tall, with a widow's walk and bay windows and the particular kind of ornamentation that had once signaled prosperity and now just signaled age. The paint was the color of old bone. The front door was dark green, almost black in the October light.
She had driven four hundred miles to see this house. She had two boxes in her car, a laptop bag, and a coffee that had gone cold somewhere around the state line.
"I'll take it," she said.
The People of Vellantry Street
Characters
The Researcher
Maren Voss
Thirty-one, dark circles that no amount of sleep seems to touch. A researcher who cannot leave mysteries alone. She has spent three years documenting disappeared women — and now she is living in one's house.
"She wore the same expression whether she was happy or bracing herself."
The Neighbor
Ezra Fenn
Tall, dark-haired, a canvas jacket repaired at both elbows with different-colored thread. He was the one who reported Iris missing. He has been carrying that morning for eleven years.
"Someone who had stood in hard weather and decided not to be changed by it into something smaller."
The Disappeared
Iris Calloway
Retired librarian. Sixty-four years old when she vanished. A woman of fierce opinions and genuine kindness. She had been building a record of something — and someone wanted it stopped.
"She seemed like she was saying goodbye."
The Keeper
Eleanor Okonkwo
She had been twenty-four when the men from Pallister Land Associates came to her parents' door. She kept Iris's notebook behind the tablecloths for eleven years, waiting for someone to ask.
"I've been waiting for someone to ask."
A Note on the Story
What is HopePunk?
HopePunk is sometimes misunderstood as optimism — as stories where everything turns out fine and the heroes win and the darkness was never really that dark. That's not what it is.
HopePunk is the insistence on hope in full knowledge of the darkness. It is the choice, made deliberately and at real cost, to believe in something worth building even when the evidence is thin and the people with power would rather you didn't. It is the act of care as a form of resistance. The community that forms in the wreckage. The person who says I will not let this be forgotten and means it and does it.
"Not that the world is safe. Not that justice is easy or quick or sufficient. Just that people keep showing up for each other anyway, and that this matters, and that it is enough to keep going."
Iris Calloway held her notebook for eleven years and trusted that someone would come. Maren Voss drove four hundred miles toward a mystery she couldn't leave alone. Ezra Fenn fixed the broken things he could fix and waited for the ones he couldn't. Eleanor Okonkwo kept the notebook behind the tablecloths and trusted.
That is HopePunk.
About the Author
Mathew Kracken
Mathew Kracken writes at the intersection of gothic atmosphere and social conscience. His work explores what happens when ordinary people refuse to let injustice stay buried — and what they find in each other when they do.
The House on Vellantry Street is his debut novel, published by Manifest-Success Press.
For anyone who has ever stood at the edge of something dark
and decided to walk toward the light anyway.