"The House of Ashes" by Stuart Neville

An audio book

A couple (Damian an architect; Sarah an ex social worker who recently tried suicide - her close-3rd person PoV) have moved into a Northern Ireland house that had been burnt down and restored. She has trouble washing away brown/red stains on the stone floor. A old woman, Mary who had lived there is now in a care home. She was born in the house's cellar to a woman who was held captive there. Mary's first-person PoV tells us more. Ester's PoV (she was brought to the house later) adds detail to life in the house. Ester's mother then father died, and the married rev who took her in abused her (and his own daughter), his wife knowing.

Damian (who grew up locally) knew about the house's past (60 years before) but hadn't told his wife. She goes to the local grocers to know more. Mary was the only survivor when 4 others died in the house. People think the house is haunted.

Damian is protective (controlling?) and is short tempered. His father was (falsely?) imprisoned for owning explosives. The shopkeeper suspects he had something to do with the fire. The electrician, Tony, tells her that Damian's father is nasty, and Damian no better. Damian, like the men in the house 60 years earlier, is kind just after he's been nasty. Sarah's friends had told her early in the relationship that he was controlling her.

She visits Mary. She says that she didn't set light to her house - she'd heard someone break in. She says what happened on the night she escaped for the first time - how a policeman had visited, how Ester had made a run for it. The men had disagreed about what to do.

Sarah runs away. Tony helps her. Damian and his father catch them. His father violently assaults Tony. Damian takes Sarah back to the house, apologises, locks her in.

We learn how Mary escaped. She murdered. She's haunted by children (her dead brothers and sisters). Sarah sees them too. She digs up some skeletons under the house. Sarah attacks Damian in self-defence. She calls the police.

Damiam seems so unpleasant that I thought he must be involved in a twist. Maybe, I thought, he kills his father to save his wife? But no.

There's a tendency (here, and in similar novels that I've recently read) to use nouns where a verb is more normal - "a scream came out of her mouth" rather than "she screamed".