Fifteen-year-old Miranda "Miri" Vale has lost everything: her parents, her Brooklyn home, and the life she understood. Then her estranged grandmother brings her to Ashbourne Academy, an isolated school where magic runs through old bloodlines, family names carry dangerous weight, and everyone seems to know more about Miri than she knows about herself. Surrounded by students who have spent their lives preparing for a world she never knew existed, Miri struggles to find her place. An unlikely friendship with three students offers a beginning. But belonging at Ashbourne comes with questions no one wants her to ask.
The academy was founded by four Houses. Its history insists there was never a fifth.
As unsettling visions draw Miri deeper into the school's past, she and her friends uncover evidence of an older darkness beneath the academy. When tragedy strikes on Samhain, their search for answers becomes impossible to abandon. The adults won't answer their questions. The past refuses to remain silent. And whatever has been waiting below Ashbourne may already know Miri's name.
The Fifth House begins The Ashbourne Academy Chronicles, a young adult fantasy series about grief, friendship, awakening magic, and the dangerous histories we inherit.
Some histories don't stay buried. Some houses were never meant to be found.
