Resumé af novellen 'House Names'

In the short story House Names, we encounter two characters, Chad Dugan and Serenity Dawes. The setting is a bookshelf in a MegaMart, where the two main characters meet. One of them finds the other rearranging books on the shelf. They strike up a conversation and discover that they are both authors. It turns out that Chad is rearranging the books so that his own book has the best position to sell. By coincidence, she is also a writer, and Chad has inadvertently put her book at the bottom of the shelf. Since they are both writers, they agree to grab a cup of coffee together. As they are leaving the store, a couple of cops suddenly enter and arrest Serenity. She insists that they have made a mistake and that she is innocent, but the officers reveal that her real name is Phyllis Milligan, and that she is a criminal who pretends to be an author to lure victims into the parking lot and rob them. After the arrest, Chad leaves the store reflecting on how close he has been to becoming her next victim. But the story ends with another plot twist, it turns out that Chads plan from the beginning was to lure a victim, and get her to his car, where he had duct tape and knifes waiting. Lastly, Chad drives away into the night, toward another town and yet another MegaMart, and who knows maybe another victim.