Hereditation

The portrait of a disturbing descent into madness, this novel centers on two brothers who live in a brownstone house in New York City with their sickly mother and who all have issuses with Ezra, the family's patriarch. When Ezra suddenly dies from a massive a heart attack, the sons, Erwin and Maynard Sloane, decide to unearth a long-locked family chest. The contents, however, force the sons to look at themselves in a different light and ask themselves: will they succumb to the depravity that has haunted their family for generations, or can they be the first to break free from their family's past?

J. P. Smythe is a writer who has a PhD in creative writing from Cardiff University in Wales. He performs intermittently in an improvised comedy group and has written a book about Twitter.