A dark-comedy thriller

G. Rench.

This Christmas, the naughty list has an author.

Get the first chapter Read the premise

A novel by T. Teller  ·  Westhaven, December

Cover of G. Rench: a masked figure in a red coat and green suit leaps across snowy rooftops under a full moon, a bloody candy cane in hand, an antlered dog running below.

A dark reimagining of the Grinch

He isn't stealing Christmas. He's settling accounts.

Seventeen years ago, the town of Westhaven held its Christmas Eve parade while the house on the hill burned. The parade was lovely. The family in the house didn't make it. Nobody was ever blamed, nobody ever apologized, and every December since, the town has sung a little louder to cover the sound of not thinking about it.

Grant Rench is what's left of that family: the valley's furnace man, six foot four of him, alone on the hill with a dog in borrowed antlers and a brass spyglass five generations old. The town reads his name wrong and calls him the Grench behind his back. They have no idea. He services every furnace in Westhaven. He holds a key to every wall. And this Christmas, the people who taught him what indifference costs are finally getting his bill.

The only one who sees it coming is Cindy Lewis, twelve years old, who counts everything, because counting is how you notice what's missing. She's about to break her family's furnace on purpose, just to get a look at him up close.

A dark comedy about grief, cheer as a bylaw, and the one kid in town who actually looks.

A masked figure in a red coat and green suit stands on a bare hill beside a lonely trailer and a weight bench, a brass spyglass raised to one eye, watching the lit windows of the valley town below. An antlered dog sits at his side under a full moon.
The one undecorated home in the valley belongs to the man grading all the others.

Then the snow changed.

It kept falling. It just stopped being white.

Westhaven, after dark

Find a window. Some of them are still awake.

A few thousand people, one main street, and a hill nobody drives up twice. Tap a window. One house never answers.

Westhaven keeps its own website. The parade schedule, the lost and found, the heating guy's terrible reviews. All of it is real, in there.

Visit Westhaven

December 13–24

The Twelve Days of Westhaven

One door a day. A welcome packet, a citation, a voicemail you did not want, and a bell count that comes up short. Comedy first. The dread arrives on schedule.

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