Stefan Kiesbye was born on the German coast of the Baltic Sea, and though he now lives and works in Los Angeles, he has set his second work of fiction, Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone, in rural Germany. It is within the fearful, superstitious and timeless village of Hemmersmoor that several children come of age and return many years later as distant adults after the death of one of their group.
Moving beyond the friends' troubled reunion at the funeral, Kiesbye's novel consists of individual but linked stories told in flashback narration by each of the main characters. Almost immediately, it becomes clear there are wicked and horrifying secrets haunting Hemmersmoor and its inhabitants. With perfectly chilling subtlety, Kiesbye's characters tell of terrible things, both witnessed and experienced: murder, deals with the devil, child abuse and incest, accidents and injuries, infanticide and rape.
The eerily dispassionate prose of Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone keeps the reader engaged with this literary horror novel; the connection among the four adolescents moves the story forward as they each reveal unsettling secrets that affect their families, their friends and their village. Kiesbye's work has evoked comparisons to Stephen King, the Brothers Grimm and Shirley Jackson, but readers will find that this perfectly creepy but utterly compelling novel deserves to stand on its own. --Roni K. Devlin, owner, Literary Life Bookstore