Arlen Wagner has a gift or a curse because he can tell if someone is going to die soon. Arlen is on a train headed to work in the Florida Keys, and since it’s the depression this job is no small thing, but then he sees that everyone on the train is about to die. Arlen must do something but only the young Paul Brickhill will leave the train with him.
Still determined to go to the Keys, Arlen and Paul accept a ride from a stranger. Only instead of the Keys they end up on the Gulf Coast at the run-down and isolated Cypress House. The Cypress House sits on the beach, but there are no boarders or guests and the woman who runs it, Rebecca Cady, is as elusive as she is beautiful.
It doesn’t take any special gifts to know that there is something dirty behind the Cypress House and the whole area. Threatened by the local law, Arlen knows there is trouble brewing, but Paul is smitten with Rebecca and won’t leave. Filled with tension, The Cypress House by Michael Koryta is a supernatural thriller that has the ever present threat of danger as Arlen has seen the signs that death is coming.