Do these Reddit AITA compilations ever sneak into your newsfeed? They’re not news, but sometimes they’re fun to read because you can think to yourself, “At least my life isn’t that bad!”

This book could fit right in there. “AITA: My mother wants me to open our summer house in Maine so my brother can spend his leave there after winning his medal, but it’s just me and three female servants for this giant house in the middle of nowhere and the trains are all off schedule and the tires of the cars have all been commandeered for higher priority use, and I still haven’t quite gotten over my fiancé’s death in the Pacific theatre but my mother insists that my brother will go there. My sister says ITA because I’m leaving mother at her Newport estate and going on by myself, but if I don’t, mother will have a heart attack just so she can blame it on me.”

NTA.

Things get worse when Elinor gets to the house in Maine. First, there’s no on there to meet them at the station and, when they get to the house, everything is cold and dark and the local woman who acts as housekeeper isn’t there. They manage to get inside and light the furnace but, when Elinor goes into town to order groceries and get the phone turned on, she discovers that the housekeeper is in the hospital. There’s a funny smell – not funny ha-ha, but funny acrid and unpleasant. Someone has been camping out in the house, Elinor can tell by little things in the bedroom, and then the maids she brought from town find a body burned in the linen closet – and quit.

Now Elinor is alone in the big old house, with phone only during a few hours a day, and someone is creeping around, setting wildfires, Nasty neighbors are gossiping, claiming her hero brother had been sneaking around town, about the time that the body had been burned and the housekeeper pushed down the grand staircase. There’s a strange guy who might be a federal agent hanging out in a nearby house.

And worse of all, Elinor’s dead fiancé’s sweetheart of a father who lives next door to your house is clearly suffering cognitive decline: he wanders around day and night and insists, insists that his son is still alive, although all the naval reports are that he was lost at sea when his plane went down.

And all Elinor wants to do is shut up the house and join the WACs or the WAVES – but now her over-entitled sister is showing up, demanding that Elinor cater to her every whim.

And the local sheriff thinks her family has something to do with it.

Want to know what’s really going on and how Elinor gets out of this crazy situation?

You can still get this book on e- and I bet you can find it in a used bookstore.