Room Nine

By Carson Haubrich

Eleven rooms. One guest. One road in.

Cora Finch takes the night desk at a motel on a mountain pass for one reason: in December the state closes the road. After a year of running from a husband who never once raised his voice - who found her in Coeur d'Alene in five weeks and in Sandpoint in nine days - a road with a gate on it is the only wall that has ever worked.

In November, a man checks into room nine and doesn't leave.

He pays cash. He gives a name that isn't his. He is quiet and useful and slightly formal, and he is the first person in two years Cora has wanted to talk to. Every Thursday he drives eleven miles down the mountain to use the last working pay phone in the county, and he will not say why.

Then the pass closes with the two of them sealed inside it. And on a February morning, a car is found abandoned three-quarters of a mile below the summit - driver's door standing open, four inches of undisturbed snow on the seat, a woman's coat folded neatly behind it.

The man in room nine looks at that open door and says a name under his breath.

It isn't the name of the woman who owns the car.

A psychological thriller about being found - and about the terrible difference between someone who is looking for you and someone who is watching you.

"Gone people don't keep books."

Perfect for readers of Behind Closed Doors, The Last Thing He Told Me, and Local Woman Missing - a slow-burn, snowbound suspense novel about coercive control, complicity, and a woman who survives because she wrote everything down.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HDN2KSRB
• ISBN13: 9798191823683
• Release Date: August 2026
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 166 Pages
• Weight: 0.51 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.4" x 6.0"