 | | | Author of 37 New York Times Best Selling Thrillers | | |  | | | | | Books by John Saul  | Suffer the Children Dell, 1977 A novel of unnatural passion and supernatural terror. I hundred years ago in Port Arbello a pretty niggling girl began to scream. And struggle. And die. No one heard. No one saw. Simply one man whose guilty center burst in pain as he dashed himself to death in the sea. At present something peculiar is happening in Port Arbello. The Children are disappearing, ane by one. An evil History is repeating itself. And one foreign, terrified child has concluded her silence with a scream that began a hundred years ago. | Punish the Sinners Dell, 1978 The nighttime rapture of a medieval terror has come up back to claim the young and innocent one by i . . . past one. Italy, 1252: Inquisition. Accusation. Fear. Torture. The guilty and the innocent dying for sins real and imagined, in the flames of the burning stake... Neilsville, 1978: Peter Balsam has come to this sleepy desert boondocks to teach its youth, and finds a mystery of mounting horror. Something is happening to the young girls of St. Francis Xavier Loftier Schoolhouse--something evil. In bloodlet and terror a suicide contagion has swept the town...while a nighttime order of its holy men enacts a secret medieval ritual. Is hysteria manipulating these innocent children into violent self-destruction? or has a supernatural force, a thirteenth-century madness, returned to...Punish the Sinners. |  |  | Cry for the Strangers Dell, 1979 And the Fiddling Children Shall Lead Them, from Terror...to Terror...to Terror. Could such a lovely little town hold something so evil? Clark'due south Harbor was the perfect coastal haven, jealously guarded against outsiders. Only now strangers have come to settle there. And a small boy is suddenly free of a frenzy that had gripped him since birth... His sis is haunted by fearful visions... And one by i, in violent, mysterious ways the strangers are dying. Never the townspeople. Only the strangers. Has a dark bargain been struck betwixt the people of Clark'southward Harbor and some supernatural force? Or is it the sea itself calling out for human sacrifice? A howling, deadly...Weep for the Strangers. | Comes the Blind Fury Dell, 1980 A kid cried out...in torment. In terror. From out of the by, from out of the mists, a terrible vengeance is born. Amanda: A century ago, a gentle bullheaded girl walked the cliffs of Paradise Betoken. So the children came—taunting, teasing—until she lost her footing and fell, shrieking her rage to the drowning sea... Michelle: At present Michelle has come from Boston to live in the large house on Paradise Signal. She is excited about her new life, ready to make new friends...until a hand reaches out of the swirling mists—the hand of a blind child. She is request for friendship...seeking revenge...whispering her name... |  |  | When the Wind Blows Dell, 1981 Out of the dark, out of the past, the terror comes...When the Wind Blows The children were waiting. Waiting for centuries. Waiting for someone to hear their cries. Now 9-year-old Christie Lyons has come to live in the house on the colina—the firm where no children take lived for fifty years. Now trivial Christie volition sleep in the one-time-fashioned plant nursery on the third floor. Now Christie's terror volition brainstorm...When the Wind Blows the children must die! | The God Projection Bantam, 1982 Something is happening to the children of Eastbury, Massachusetts...Something that causes good for you babies to plough cold in their cribs. Something that strikes at the heart of every parent's darkest fears. Something unexplained that is taking the children, 1 by one. Emerge Montgomery has just lost her beautiful little baby daughter. Lucy and Jim Corliss, bitterly divorced, accept been reunited past the sudden disappearance of their son. An unabridged town waits on the edge of panic for the adjacent kid to exist taken. They all know there must exist a reason for the terror. Only no one e'er expected...The God Project. |  |  | Nathaniel Runted, 1984 From the blood of the by, evil rises to seek undying vengeance... Prairie Bend. Bright summers amid golden fields. Killing winters of razorlike cold. A peaceful, neighborly hamlet, darkened by legends of decease? Who is Nathaniel? For a hundred years, the people of Prairie Bend have whispered the proper name in wonder and fearfulness. Some say he is simply a folk tale—a legend created to frighten children on cold wintertime nights. Some swear he is a terrifying spirit returned to avenge the past. And presently...very soon...some will come to believe that Nathaniel lives yet—darkly, horrifyingly real. Nathaniel. For young Michael Hall, newly arrived in isolated Prairie Bend subsequently having lost his father to a sudden tragic accident, Nathaniel is the voice that calls him across the prairie night...the vox that draws him into the shadowy depths of the erstwhile, aging barn where he has been forbidden to go...the voice—chanting, compelling—he will follow faithfully beyond the edge of terror...Nathaniel. | Brainchild Bantam, 1985 La Paloma...once home to a proud Spanish heritage...now a thriving mod customs high in the California hills...where a boy named Alex is about to become the musical instrument of a terrible, undying vengeance... Alex needs a miracle. Alex Lonsdale was one of the most popular kids in La Paloma. Until the horrifying car accident. Until a vivid doc's medical miracle brought him back from the brink of death. At present Alex has come dorsum. He seems the aforementioned. But in his eyes there is a terrible blankness. In his heart there is a coldness. And if his parents, his friend, his girlfriend could run into within his brain, if they could see his dreams, they would exist terrified. Now the people must dice. One hundred years a go in La paloma a terrible deed was done; a cry for vengeance pierced the night. In night and hole-and-corner places in La Paloma that evil lives still, that vengeance waits. Waits for Alex Lonsdale. Waits for the ...Abstraction |  |  | Hellfire Bantam, 1986 Compassion the dead. For one hundred years the one-time factory has stood silent, its dread secrets locked away and barred from view. Notwithstanding, the people of Westover, Massachusetts, recall—remember and whisper of that fateful 24-hour interval when horrifying flames claimed eleven innocent lives. The day the mill'southward atomic number 26 doors slammed shut—forever. Pray for the living. Now, Westover is a sleepy town tucked away beyond the Interstate, all but forgotten. At present, the last of the one time-powerful Sturgess family dreams of reopening the mill. Now Philip Sturgess is near to unlock the doors to the past...and unleash an elemental fury. For beyond those doors, padlocked for so many years, deep inside the night, abandoned building, a terrible vengeance waits. A vengeance conceived in...Hellfire. | The Unwanted Bantam, 1987 Cassie Winslow is sixteen. Cassie has just lost her mother in a terrible accident. Now Cassie, solitary and frightened, has come up across the land to live with the father she barely knows and his new family in tiny Imitation Harbor on Greatcoat Cod. For Cassie, the foreign, unsettling dreams that come to her of a sudden in the dead of nighttime are only the beginning. For very soon, Cassie Winslow volition come to know the terrifying powers that are her souvenir. And in the village of False Harbor, naught will ever be the same... |  |  | The Unloved Runted, 1988 The House: Lush and deceptively tranquil, with its pristine beaches and blossoming vegetation, the island basks in splendid isolation off the S Carolina coast. Here, where sudden storms unleash the murderous rage of current of air and body of water, stands the Devereaux mansion, a once-great plantation house now crumbling amongst ancient oaks dripping with Spanish moss. Here, Marguerite Devereaux, l and childless, has cast off her dreams to intendance for her aged, demanding mother. The Family: Now, for the first time in twenty years, Kevin Devereaux has returned home to this secluded place with his wife and two children. They accept come to visit Kevin'south female parent—hated, frightening Female parent, with her slash of crimson lipstick, mask of os-white powder, and a tongue that has always cut to Kevin's heart...and into his darkest nightmares. She said she was sick—simply is that the real reason the onetime woman summoned the son she has non seen in so many years? The Horror: Suddenly, horribly, Female parent dies inside the locked nursery. And now in that location will be no escape. For now, all the secrets of this once-proud southern family unit emerge like tortured spirits from the sinister past to wrap their evil effectually the unsuspecting children. Until, in the adumbral corridors and dust-covered rooms of this decomposable erstwhile house, they larn the truthful terror of The Unloved. | Creature Runted, 1989 To the Tanner family, Silverdale beckons every bit a marvelous opportunity. For here, in this serene picture-postcard-pretty boondocks nestled high in the majestic Rockies, a task promotion awaits Blake; new friends and activities beckon Sharon. And in the windswept mountain air, their shy, nature-loving son, Marker, volition accept the ideal opportunity to overcome the physical frailty an illness has caused. Silverdale. It is the perfect town. Even Silverdale Loftier Schoolhouse seems perfect--a model school where well-behaved students make their parents and teachers proud. And the football squad never—ever—loses. But soon, also soon, Sharon Tanner will come to doubt the sanctuary of her family unit's perfect new surround. Too shortly she will begin to suspect the things she cannot nonetheless know: The secret rituals masked equally scientific discipline to which Silverdale's innocent children are unwittingly subjected... The hidden places in deep cellars where steel gleams coldly against the night—the steel of cages built to contain an unimaginable evil... The sudden violence that turns a loving child murderous... Soon—perhaps as well late—Sharon Tanner will realize that beneath Silverdale's perfect facade a terrible presence watches...and waits. Through sleepless, fear-racked nights she will listen to an eerie weep of unfathomable rage and hurting. A wail so horrifyingly unearthly it could belong to no living affair, animal or human, she has ever known. And then, with crushing suddenness, Sharon will know—know that within Silverdale, peradventure within her own home, a monstrous evil is harbored, and evil so unspeakable it has no name except...Creature. |  |  | 2d Child Bantam, 1990 Hole-and-corner Cove. Ruggedly cute and remote, bordered by night woods and deserted beaches, this postcard-perfect village harbors the mansions of the wealthy—families who have summered in first-class seclusion at Surreptitious Cove for generations. Here, one hundred years agone, on the night of the annual August Moon Ball, a shy and lovely retainer girl committed a unmarried, unspeakable act of violence—an human activity and then shocking its legacy lives even so. And now, long afterward the horror of that night has faded to a tale whispered by children around summer campsite fires, an unholy terror is about to exist reborn. Now, ane family is nearly to experience the icy hand of supernatural fear—equally Melissa Holloway, shy and troubled and just thirteen years quondam, comes to know the blood-drenched hush-hush that waits backside a locked attic door... For in the dead of night a Underground Cove sleeps unaware, a soul-spooky presence slowly begins to enact a terrifying vengeance. Second Child: It is unspeakable evil just Melissa's nightmares fabricated horrifyingly real? Is it the manifestation of deadly fury risen from the grave? Or is the heart-stopping horror soon to be unleased in Cloak-and-dagger Cove something fifty-fifty more insidious--something unimaginably evil...and live? | Sleepwalk Bantam, 1991 Borrego, New Mexico. A peaceful piffling desert town. Except for 1 thing. Somebody here hates teenagers. Hates them. These troublemakers, these rebels, have to exist controlled. Silenced. Forever. At present he has discovered an insidious way to strike back at them. In their slumber. In their waking hours. Anytime. He is a madman with terrifying powers. And soon, he volition draw Borrego's children across the brink of night... |  |  | Darkness Bantam, 1991 The Andersons left the town at the edge of the swamp long agone, never meaning to return. There was something not quite right near the vast savage lowlands of Villejeune...something murky, menacing, hostile...an influence also malevolent to exist natural. But the Andersons' dream of a new life in Atlanta faded away with Ted's lost job and sixteen-year-old Kelly'southward emotional problems. Now, hoping a change of scenery might help their troubled daughter put her life back together, Ted and Mary Anderson have decided to come home. Home to Villejeune. Just something waits for them. Something evil. Far from the prying eyes of culture, beyond the attain of man constabulary, a mysterious unknowable society lives by its ain rules. They have their own customs, their ain ceremonies and blood rites—dark rituals of altars and infants, of candle, spirit and knife. At present the Andersons' return has completed a circle of destiny begun long agone. Now they must confront a mortiferous drama of unholy ceremony and secret horror, of ancient greed preying upon immature life, of unutterable depravity. For, like the other children of Villejeune—children without mercy, without tears—Kelly Anderson is about to exist fatigued into a darkness so terrible it spares no life, no soul... | Bantam, 1992 They telephone call it The Academy. Housed in a secluded, cliff-top mansion overlooking the rugged and picturesque Pacific coast, it is a schoolhouse for special children. Children gifted—or cursed—with boggling minds. Children shortly to come up under the influence of an intelligence even more brilliant than their own—and unspeakably evil. For within this mind a dark, ingenious plan is taking grade. A hellish experiment meant to probe the ultimate limits of the human brain. Estimator whiz child Adam Aldrich lives for his exploration of virtual reality. Lured ever deeper into his video fantasy globe, he does not imagine that his reality will shortly go a living nightmare. Until the moment he sees the blinding light. Adam's fate will be called a tragic midnight accident. But is it something far worse? Amy Carlson, serious and shy, is fascinated past homo behavior. Only when she volunteers for an experiment in pick making, she unknowingly narrows her own options. When Amy's fate is sealed, will it be suicide—or murder? For Josh MacCallum, brilliant but lone, Amy'due south weep for assistance leads to a frightening noesis. Soon Josh volition suspect that Amy'southward desperate plea comes from the depths of darkness, from a blackness so horrifying that not even he with his genius-lever IQ could envision information technology. Before long Josh volition uncover the terrifying truth about The University. And he will come to understand that no i will believe him. Not unless he tin pit his young mind against an intellect then powerful, so evil, then cunning, that nothing can resists its seductive invitation—into the shadows... |  |  | Guardian Fawcett, 1993 A phone ringing in the dead of nighttime signals the beginning of a journeying into fear as Mary Anne Carpenter, newly separated and struggling to raise her two children alone, hears the shocking news: ii thousand miles away, her friends, the Wilkensons, are all of a sudden, inexplicably expressionless, their simply child, Mary Anne's godchild, abruptly orphaned. Even as Mary Anne rushes to embrace her young accuse the disturbing questions mountain. Was it merely a hazard—though tragic—mishap that took these lives? Or was it murder? Soon Mary Anne will begin to suspect an even more sinister forcefulness at work. For Joey Wilkenson, a sad and silent adolescent, seems to harbor secrets across her most nightmarish imaginings. Presently, every bit early on winter closes in on the majestic, lone spot where the Wilkensons take built their beautiful ranch, transforming the mountain landscape into a forbidding place of blinding storms and dangerous darkness, Joey'southward sly secretiveness, his volatile atmosphere, begin to turn Mary Anne's tender feelings to icy fear. And soon, every bit a series of horrific murders draws always closer to her young family unit—killings that suggest some raging fauna, or worse, and defy solution by a desperate law strength—Mary Anne begins to know the true pregnant of terror. In Guardian, the forces of nature and the forces of evil combine chillingly in a complexly-woven novel of psychological suspense, every bit a peaceful haven becomes a prison where, alone in the howling winter whiteness, Mary Anne Carpenter must guard her children against an unseen, always more than insatiable killer—a killer who is closer than she thinks... | The Homing Fawcett, 1994 Information technology volition exist the sweetest kind of homecoming for Karen Spellman. Afterward years of living in Los Angeles, the pretty, young widow and her two daughters are leaving urban anarchy behind to render to the lush countryside of Karen's childhood: Pleasant Valley, a verdant, fertile place where Karen volition rediscover not only the bounty of the land, just love. For Karen is going home to marry her loftier schoolhouse sweetheart. Only something sinister awaits the Spellmans. Something as primal equally nature itself. Something then hideous it seems non earthly, just spawned in hell. For here, long ago, amidst placid rolling fields, a shadowy menace once stalked the innocent. Dormant, it waits or summer'south oestrus to shimmer over the valley in a suffocating wave, waits for the arrival of its perfect victim. And at present, with the dizzying descent of a nightmare, Karen'due south homecoming will get a confrontation with terror, as she struggles to protect her vulnerable daughters from a menace that seems to ascent from the very world itself, like a swarm of insects stirred in the frenzy of a monstrous homing a malign, preternatural forcefulness that must satisfy its gruesome thirst for its unsuspecting prey... John Saul weaves a dark spider web of psychological suspense and all-consuming evil in a novel equally richly atmospheric, as riveting and chilling, equally any he has ever produced. |  |  | Black Lightning Fawcett, 1995 Also bachelor every bit an audio book For five years Seattle was seized in the terrifying grip of a monster every bit black every bit evil itself. A sadistic serial killer methodically lured his victims to grisly deaths in order to satisfy a twisted passion for life, leaving a trail of mutilated bodies beyond the nation. For five years journalist Anne Jeffers stuck to this gruesome story like a shadow through the killer'southward capture, trial and appeal doggedly keeping the wheels of justice churning toward the electric chair, despite the prisoner's reasoned claims of innocence. Then came the twenty-four hour period of execution. The police and the public, especially Anne, thought the five-year nightmare was over. Simply information technology was simply beginning... Someone or something is murdering again, mirroring a sociopath'southward lurid desire to concord life in the palms of his hands. Despite mounting doubts, Anne Jeffers is adamant to prove that the guilty man was indeed executed. Yet what she finds is a sinister, powerful strength that defies even death. Now pure evil has taken a new course, and it longs for Anne.... In Black Lightning, John Saul strikes with a novel as electrifying every bit a jagged commodities from a pitch-night heaven, proving one time again that he is a genius at both nail-biting suspense and the spine-tingling macabre. |  | The Blackstone Chronicles , The Serial Novel Ballantine, 1997 Go to the Ballantine Books Web site for The Blackstone Chronicles
From the meridian of Blackstone's highest hill the old Blackstone Asylum casts its shadow over the hamlet. Built in the 1890s, the Aviary has stood vacant for decades. But now, the wrecker's ball is about to strike, keen into rock--and unleashing a terrible evil, an unholy fear long locked within these walls. Soon, foreign gifts volition begin to appear on the doorsteps of Blackstone's finest citizens. Each bears a mysterious history. Each brings a horrifying power to harm. Each reveals another thread in the suspensefully woven spider web of The Blackstone Chronicles. |  |  | The Presence Ballantine, 1998
A foreign archaeological discovery. Secret medical experiments on an island paradise. A scientific theory torn from today's headlines. Beyond the sparkling Hawaiian beaches, masked by the deceptive beauty of the rainforest, evil awaits 16-year-old Michael Sundquist and his mother, Katharine, an anthropologist who has come to the Islands to study the unusal skeletal remains unearthed on the volcanic flanks of Haleakala, Maui. Yet far below the black depths of the pacific a mysterious substance snakes through undiscovered fissures in the ocean floor, as nature itself seems to portend the terror to come. Then, with the sudden, unexplained expiry of Michael's friend, a disturbing truth dawns: the corporation that is funding Katharine's dig has a far greater investment than she ever imagined--an investment in medical terror. And her son may be role of their hideous thousand program... | The Correct Manus of Evil Ballantine, 1999 When the Conways move into their ancestral home in Louisiana later the death of an estranged aunt, it is with the hope of a new beginning. Merely the house has a life of its own. Abandoned for the final forty years, surrounded by thick trees and a stifling sense of melancholy, the sprawling Victorian house seems to swallow upwardly the sunlight. Deep within the common cold cellar and etched into the very walls is a long, night history of the Conway name--a grim bloodline poisoned by suicide, strange disappearances, voodoo rituals and rumors of murder. Just the family knows nothing of the soul-shattering secrets that snake through generations of their by. They practise non know that terror awaits them. For with each generation of the Conways comes a hellish day of reckoning... |  | Manhattan Chase Club Ballantine, 2001 MANHATTAN HUNT Social club Y'all are invited you to descend to chilling new depths of darkness-and discover a secret, savage world that exists below our very feet. The promising future of New York City college student Jeff Converse has suddenly been shattered by a nightmarish turn of events. Falsely convicted of a brutal crime, Jeff sees his life vanishing before his eyes. But someone has other plans for Jeff, in a far deadlier place than any penitentiary. He finds himself beneath the teeming streets of Manhattan, in a hidden landscape of twisting tunnels and forgotten subterranean chambers. Hither, an invisible population of the homeless, the desperate, and the mad has carved out its own shadow social club. But they are non alone. The pitch-night tunnels and abandoned subway stations are haunted past the unmistakable sounds of predators in search of game. Someone has made this forsaken civilization below the city a private killing ground…and the hunt is on. Trapped in a treacherous underground maze, cut off at every turn by ragged gangs of sinister "gamekeepers," and stalked relentlessly by unseen hunters, Jeff faces overwhelming odds in the race to reach conservancy and elude capture. With no weapon but his wits, and an unimaginable threat lurking around every dark corner, Jeff must somehow move heaven and world to escape from a living hell. |  |  | Nightshade Ballantine, 2000 Nightshade is the terrifying story of an innocent teenager who must face the sins of the by-and a corrupting evil that threatens to eat his entire world.... Fifteen-twelvemonth-one-time Matthew Moore seems to have it all: a loving mother, Joan; a caring stepfather, Nib, who treats Matt like has own son; residence at a sprawling manor in New Hampshire; and a growing human relationship with the near beautiful girl at schoolhouse. All signs indicate to a vivid futurity. Until fate intervenes. A sudden burn leaves Matt'south ailing grandmother homeless. Afterwards moving in with the family unit, the caustic Emily insists on re-creating the sleeping accommodation of her deceased daughter, the favored child who died tragically more than a decade ago. Joan and her older sis had always shared an uneasy bond-and a shameful clandestine that would forever join them...even from beyond the grave. So Matt's life insidiously begins to change. He starts to smell his aunt'south pungent perfume, and so potent and immediate that information technology is as if she has returned from the dead. At night, he finds himself haunted past nightmares of unimaginable terror. While his grandmother drives a wedge betwixt his once devoted parents, Matt transforms from a gregarious teenager to a hostile 1, tortured by chilling memories and prone to fits of rage. Then a shocking tragedy shatters the family across repair, propelling Joan and Emily into a final, explosive confrontation...a showdown in which erstwhile wounds will exist viciously torn open-and a horrific shadow from the past volition bound an implacable life of its ain, clawing toward Matt with the ferocious inevitability of death itself. |  | Midnight Voices Ballantine, 2002 MIDNIGHT VOICES What if insidious evil flourished in the one place where you feel most prophylactic? The spooky answers comes fro New York Times bestselling chief of suspense John Saul-in a new novel that reminds you there is no place like dwelling…for sheer terror. The sudden, tragic death of her married man leaves Caroline van alone in New York Metropolis to raise an eleven-year-former son and a twelve-year-quondam daughter on little money and even less hope. But then she meets and marries handsome, successful Anthony Fleming, who wins her heart and embraces her children. When Caroline settles her family into Anthony'south spacious apartment on Manhattan's Primal Park West, her fears of an uncertain hereafter requite way to a sense of abundant happiness. But shortly, new terrors will come up home to roost. In the luxurious, exclusive building named The Rockwell. Midnight voices whisper of a cruel and hungry presence that also calls the Rockwell abode. Starting time Caroline'south girl begins to suffer from recurring nightmares of strangers in her room at dark. Then her son insists that a neighbor'south recently deceased kid isn't dead at all-merely being held captive somewhere in The Rockwell. And when Caroline discovers a startling secret about Anthony's by, it seems she, likewise, is falling victim to the creeping paranoia infecting her family unit. Should she incertitude her perfect husband, their kindly fellow tenants, or her ain sanity? Does someone-or something-in her new domicile accept sinister designs on the Caroline and her children? Is her new life overjoyed or cursed? Ste; across the threshold of The Rockwell-and into the dark realm of John Saul…in a spine tingling novel that volition haunt you wherever you alive. | Black Creek Crossing Ballantine, 2003 Black Creek Crossing The night history and dire secrets of a peaceful small town are summoned from the shadows of the past. Unholy forces are stirred from long sleep to monstrous new life. And two young misfits discover the chilling fine art of turning persecution into retribution. With these eerie ingredients, bestselling master John Saul once again works his unique brand of sinister magic to conjure an unforgettable tale of unspeakable terror. For most of her young life, fifteen-yr-quondam Angel Sullivan has been on the outside looking in, enduring the taunts of cruel schoolmates and the angry abuse of a bitter begetter. Then Angel'southward family moves to the quaint town of Roundtree, Massachusetts—where a mannerly dwelling house is bachelor, a promising job awaits Angel's unemployed father, and most of all, the chance to make a make-new start beckons to the shy, hopeful teenager. But when she is shunned by her new classmates, Angel falls deeper into despair. Until she meets Seth Baker, a fellow outcast—and a fateful kinship is forged. It's Seth who tells Angel about the legacy of murder that hangs over her family unit'southward home—and the whispered rumors that something supernatural withal dwells there. Uncertain whether the stories are truthful, and desperate to escape the torment of their daily lives, Angel and Seth devote themselves to contacting whatever restless soul haunts the dark recesses of Black Creek Crossing. But in one case they take begun, there is no turning back. Guided by an anguished and vengeful spirit, they uncover the shocking events and centuries-former horrors, that lay cached beneath the placid veneer of Roundtree. And along with the ghastly revelations comes a terrifying power—i that feeds upon the rage of the victimized, turning the basest impulses and most dangerous desires into devastating weapons,. Now, the closer Angel and Seth are pushed toward the edge by their tormentors, the deeper they descend into the maelstrom of dark forces they've unleashed…and the more unspeakable the hour of reckoning will be. |  |  | Perfect Nightmare Ballantine, 2005
If you open your house to strangers, who knows who might come up in? And what they might be after? Or who? Now, ponder the unthinkable, and give up to your darkest dread, every bit sinister storyteller extraordinaire John Saul weaves a heart-stopping tale of lurking terror and twisted intent. Every parent'southward nightmare becomes reality for Kara Marshall when her daughter, Lindsay, vanishes from her bedroom during the night. The police force suspect the girl is just another moody teenage delinquent, angry over leaving her school and friends backside because her family is moving. Just Lindsay's recent eerie claim-that someone invaded her room when the house was opened to prospective buyers-drives Kara to fearfulness the worst: a nameless, faceless stalker has walked the halls of her home in search of more than than a place to live. Patrick Shields recognizes Kara's hurting-and carries plenty of his own since he lost his married woman and two children in a devastating business firm-burn. Just more than grief draws them together. Patrick, too, senses the hand of a malevolent stranger in his tragedy. And as more people go missing from houses up for sale, Patrick'south suspicion, similar Kara's, blooms into horrified certainty. Someone is trolling this peaceful community-undetected and undeterred-harvesting victims for a purpose no sane listen can fathom. Someone Kara and Patrick, lone and desperate, are adamant to unmask. Someone who is even at present watching, plotting, keeping a demented diary of unspeakable deeds . . . and waiting until the time is ripe for another fateful visit. | IN THE DARK OF THE NIGHT Ballantine Books, 2006 IN THE Dark OF THE NIGHT Summer vacation becomes a season in hell for an ordinary family who unwittingly stir something invisible, insidious, and insatiable from its undercover slumber-unleashing a wave of horror merely the darkest evil could create, that only a master of spine-tingling terror like John Saul could orchestrate. For deep in the shadows in the dark of the night lurks something equally big as life . . . and as real every bit death. It has waited seven years for someone to come back to the rambling lakeside house called Pinecrest, which has stood empty since its last owner went missing. For upscale Chicago couple Dan and Merrill Brewster, the old midwestern manse is an ideal retreat, and for their kids, Eric and Marci, it'southward the perfect place to spend a lazy summer exploring. Which is how Eric and his teenage friends discover the curious enshroud of discarded objects stowed in a subconscious room of Pinecrest'due south carriage house. The bladeless hacksaws, shadeless lamps, tables with missing legs, headless axe handle, and other unremarkable items add together upwardly to a pile of junk. Yet someone took the problem to inventory each worthless relic in a cryptic ledger. It has all the makings of a cracking mystery-whispering, coaxing, enervating to be solved. But the more the boys devote themselves to restoring the forgotten possessions and piecing together the puzzle behind them, the more their fascination deepens into obsession. Soon their days are consumed with tending the strange, secret drove-while their nights become plagued by always more ghastly dreams, nightmares that soon seep into reality. And when a horrifying discovery surfaces, and so does the spooky truth-about the terrifying events that rocked the town seven years before, the mysterious disappearance of Pinecrest'due south last resident, and a twisted legacy with a malevolent life of its own . . . and a bottomless hunger for new victims. |  |  | DEVIL'S LABYRINTH Ballantine Books, 2007 Later on his father'due south untimely expiry sends xv-year-old Ryan McIntyre into an emotional tailspin, his female parent enrolls him in St. Isaac's Catholic boarding school, hoping the venerable institution with a reputation for transforming wayward teens can piece of work its magic on her son. But troubles are non unknown fifty-fifty at St. Isaac, where Ryan arrives to find the school awash in news of one student's violent expiry, another'southward mysterious disappearance, and growing incidents of disturbing behavior inside the hallowed halls. Things begin to modify when Father Sebastian joins the kinesthesia. Armed with unprecedented knowledge and uncanny skills acquired through years of underground written report, the young priest has been dispatched on an boggling and controversial mission: to prove the power of i of the Church building's nearly arcane sacred rituals, exorcism. Willing or not, St. Isaac's virtually troubled students volition be pawns in Begetter Sebastian'due south one-homo war against evil-a war so surprisingly effective that the pope himself takes observe of the seemingly miraculous events unfolding an ocean away. Simply Ryan, drawn ever more than securely into Father Sebastian's ministrations, sees-and knows-otherwise. Every bit he witnesses with mounting dread the transformations of his fellow pupils, his certainty grows that forces of darkness, not divinity, are at work. Evil is not being bandage out . . . something else is existence called along. Something that hasn't stirred since the Inquisition's reign of terror. Something nurtured through the ages to practice its vengeful masters' unholy bidding. Something whose 60 minutes has finally come to bring hell unto earth. | FACES OF Fear
Ballantine Books, 2008 Beauty may be merely pare deep, merely to the denizens of Beverly Hills and Bel Air, it means the world. Fifteen-year-old Alison Shaw may not be beautiful, but she doesn't really intendance: she'd much rather read a skillful book than primp in front of a mirror anyway. But Alison'south mother, Risa, knows that beauty tin can be a key to success, and she wishes just the best for her girl. Be conscientious what you lot wish for. When Risa marries a widowed plastic surgeon and moves Alison from Santa Monica to Bel Air, everything changes; everywhere mother and daughter look, their new world is filled with cute people, many of whom have benefited from the skills of Alison's new stepfather, the charismatic Conrad Dunn, who is certain he tin can plough Alison into a vision of beauty. Risa is delighted by Conrad's assurances-and drawn to his cool confidence and deep-set up eyes. Reluctantly, Alison agrees to undergo the first procedure, and her transformation begins. But before long Alison discovers a picture of Conrad's first wife, who killed herself after being disfigured in a car accident. To Alison's horror, she notices a resemblance between the epitome in the photograph and the work her stepfather is doing on her. Though Risa refuses to acknowledge the strange similarity, Alison becomes increasingly frightened. Digging further into her stepfather's murky past, Alison uncovers dark secrets-and even darker motives-involving a string of grim murders that began fifty-fifty before she was born. And when at last she catches sight of what she will soon be seeing in her own mirror, she knows her worst fears are fast condign her reality. |  |  | House of Reckoning
Ballentine, 200 9 Afterward the untimely death of her mother while she is still in her early teens, Sarah Crane is forced to grow up quickly-in society to help tend her family unit'south Vermont farm and look after her grieving begetter, who's drowning his sorrow in alcohol. Simply their repose life together is shattered when her father is jailed for killing another human being in a barroom brawl, and injuring Sarah in a drunken car crash. Left in the common cold intendance of a loveless foster family and alienated at school, Sarah finds a kindred spirit in classmate Nick Dunnigan, a former mental patient still plagued past voices and visions. And in eccentric art instructor Bettina Phillips, she finds a mentor eager to nurture her talent for painting. Merely inside the walls of Bettina's bequeathed home, the mansion chosen Shutters, Sarah finds something altogether unlike and disturbing. Monstrous images from the business firm's dark history seem to flow unbidden from her paintbrush-images echoed by Nick'southward chilling hallucinations. Trapped for ages in the shadowy rooms of Shutters, the violence and fury of long-dead generations has finally found a gateway from the grave into the world of the living. And Sarah and Nick have found a power they never had: to take control, and have revenge. . | |  |  | |  | |
0 Response to "People Going to Prison and Never Seeing Their Chil Again"
Post a Comment