New Releases by Peter Straub

“As if Harry Potter was written for grown-ups, Peter Straub’s Shadowland delivers carnage, blood, pain, fairy tales, and flashes of joy and wonder, just like real magic.”—Grady Hendrix You have been there...if you have ever been afraid. Come back. To a dark house deep in the Vermont woods, where two friends are spending a season of horror, apprenticed to a Master Magician. Learning secrets best left unlearned. Entering a world of incalculable evil more ancient than death itself. More terrifying. And more real. Only one of them will make it through.

Peter Straub has created a body of short stories and novellas establishes him as one of the best literary voices in the genres of horror and dark suspense. His list of accomplishments and awards is staggering: In addition to the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association, Life Achievement World Fantasy Award, Grand Master Award from World Horror, Living Legend Award from the International Horror Guild, he has won the Bram Stoker Award nine times, the World Fantasy Award three times, and one British Fantasy Award. He remains a living legend. Volume two features Peter''s novellas. Included in this collection: Blue Rose The Buffalo Hunter Mrs. God Bunny Is Good Bread Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff Pork Pie Hat A Special Place: the Heart of a Dark Matter The Process (is a Process All Its Own)

Experience the true nature of terror in this "deliciously imaginative" (San Francisco Chronicle) novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Peter Straub. The quiet suburban town of Hampstead is threatened by two horrors. One is natural. The hideous unstoppable creation of man’s power gone mad. The other is not natural at all. And it makes the first look like child’s play... “Unspeakable horror…has ‘Bestseller’ written all over it.”—Los Angeles Times “Straub’s effects are quite spectacular…I was fairly awed by some of the more nightmarish scenes in Floating Dragon.”—The New York Times

I den søvnige, lille by Milburn, New York, samles fire gamle venner for at fortælle hinanden historier. Det er et simpelt tidsfordriv for at aflede opmærksomheden fra deres ellers stille liv. Nogle af historierne er sande, andre er nogle de finder på, men fælles for dem er, at de alle er uhyggelige. Men der er en enkelt historie, som bliver ved med at hjemsøge de fire gamle mænd. Det er en historie, som omhandler noget, de gjorde for længe siden. En forfærdelig ulykke. En ond fejltagelse. Langsomt går det op for dem, at man ikke kan begrave fortiden. Før eller siden vil den indhente en. Peter Straub (f. 1943) er en amerikansk digter og forfatter. Han har udgivet en lang række horror- og spændingsromaner og har modtaget adskillige priser for sine bøger, herunder den prestigefyldte Bram Stoker-pris. Sammen med den amerikanske stjerneforfatter Stephen King står han bag de to thrillerromaner "The Talisman" (1984) og "The Black House" (2001). Straubs bøger "Julia"(1975) og "Ghost Story" (1979) er blevet filmatiseret med blandt andre Mia Farrow og Fred Astaire i hovedrollerne.

The eighth in the first series of Little Books from Borderlands Press is A Little Blue Book of Rose Stories. This is a collection of two of Peter Straub''s stories which center around the "Blue Rose" mysteries which have been featured in some of his best novels. Stories included in this collection: "Blue Rose" "The Juniper Tree"

La primera parte de la saga a cuatro manos que sigue con Casa Negra. Es un ventoso día otoñal en una playa del gris océano Atlántico, al lado del silenciado parque de atracciones y el apagado pueblo de Alhambra. Un chico de doce años, de nombre Jack, ha llegado aquí empujado por las circunstancias: su padre ha fallecido, su madre está agonizando y nada tiene ya sentido. Pero para Jack todo está a punto de cambiar, pues, aunque aún lo ignora, ha sido elegido para emprender un viaje a través de los misteriosos Territorios. Jack Sawyer, en su desesperado intento de salvarle la vida a su madre, ha de buscar el Talismán en aquel paisaje épico, hogar de monstruos e inocentes, donde habita la esperanza y también mucho más. En 1984, Stephen King y Peter Straub unieron sus talentos para escribir esta extraordinaria novela de iniciación sobre la lealtad, el miedo y lo desconocido. Se trata de la primera parte de una historia épica que sigue en Casa Negra, concebida dieciséis años después. La crítica ha dicho... «Una historia fascinante y única que compite con las mayores aventuras de todos los tiempos.» New York Daily News «Extraordinaria.» The Washington Post

Peut-on mourir de son imagination ? Willy Patrick, célèbre auteur du roman jeunesse maintes fois récompensé Le Cabinet noir, est en train de perdre l''esprit. Une fois de plus. Irrésistiblement attirée dans un parking désert, elle a la conviction que sa fille Holly y est retenue prisonnière. Or, Holly est morte. Le même jour, l''écrivain Timothy Underhill, qui tente depuis des mois de terminer un roman sur une jeune femme en perdition, est confronté au fantôme de sa fille de neuf ans, April. Il commence à recevoir des emails incomplets et angoissants de personnes issues de son passé - toutes décédées depuis bien longtemps. Lorsque Willy et Timothy se rencontrent, les inquiétantes ressemblances entre le deuil tragique de Willy et l''histoire du manuscrit de Timothy vont les conduire à unir leurs forces contre les ombres qui les entourent... avant que celles-ci ne se referment sur leur raison. « L''une des oeuvres les plus remarquables de la longue carrière de Peter Straub. » Publishers Weekly « Avec Night Room, Straub transcende les conventions de la littérature d''horreur. » Bookmark Magazine « Imaginatif et prenant aux tripes. » Booklist « Peter Straub est peut-être l''auteur de suspense contemporain le plus important. » Lincoln Child

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Story and an American icon of horror explores the deepest, shadow-filled corners of his imagination in these sixteen stories. No one and no place is safe from the darkness that he reveals. In “Blue Rose,” an adolescent sociopath inflicts secret violence on his younger brother; in “Mr Clubb and Mr. Cuff,” a stern estate lawyer hires a pair of "Private Detectives Extraordinaire" to investigate and seek revenge on his unfaithful wife; and in “The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine,” a man and his much younger lover explore their decadent and increasingly sinister fantasies aboard a luxurious yacht on the remotest stretch of the Amazon River. Interior Darkness is a thrilling and terrifying testament to Straub''s unparalleled contribution to the world of horror.

“Superstar editor Datlow makes no missteps...." —Publishers Weekly Take a terrifying journey with literary masters of suspense, including Peter Straub, Kim Newman, and Caitlín R. Kiernan, visiting a place where the other is somehow one of us. These electrifying tales redefine monsters from mere things that go bump in the night to inexplicable, deadly reflections of our day-to-day lives. Whether it''s a seemingly devoted teacher, an obsessive devotee of swans, or a diner full of evil creatures simply seeking oblivion, the monstrous is always there—and much closer than it appears.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Story—the terrifying, “electrifying” novel (Stephen King) about a man who flees the wreckage of his life to face the ghosts of his past, only to encounter a sinister force, ready to kill. One summer night in 1955, a boy and his cousin plunge naked into the moonlit waters of a rural quarry. Only one of them emerges. Just as he had promised he would on that fateful night two decades earlier, Miles Teagarden—now divorced and a struggling writer—returns to his family home in Arden, Wisconsin. But the landscape he once knew so well has turned eerie and threatening. In the small town, his erstwhile friends and rivals, even his blood relatives, view him with suspicion. Their paranoia seems justified when another beautiful blonde teenage girl goes missing—much as his cousin Alison did all those years ago. Miles feels a dark force is at work, gathering strength. As the anniversary of the tragic night approaches, he begins to fear that Alison will find a way to make their date . . .

Peter Straub, Jack Ketchum, Darynda Jones, Jacquelyn Frank, and Brian Hodge contribute five gloomy, disturbing tales of madness and horror to Dark Screams: Volume Three, edited by Brian James Freeman and Richard Chizmar of the celebrated Cemetery Dance Publications. THE COLLECTED SHORT STORIES OF FREDDIE PROTHERO by Peter Straub A mere child yet a precocious writer, young Freddie records a series of terrifying encounters with an inhuman being that haunts his life . . . and seems to predict his death. GROUP OF THIRTY by Jack Ketchum When an award-winning horror writer on the downward slope of a long career receives an invitation to address the Essex County Science Fiction Group, he figures he’s got nothing to lose. He couldn’t be more wrong. NANCY by Darynda Jones Though she’s adopted by the cool kids, the new girl at Renfield High School is most drawn to Nancy Wilhoit, who claims to be haunted. But it soon becomes apparent that poltergeists—and people—are seldom what they seem. I LOVE YOU, CHARLIE PEARSON by Jacquelyn Frank Charlie Pearson has a crush on Stacey Wheeler. She has no idea. Charlie will make Stacey see that he loves her, and that she loves him—even if he has to kill her to make her say it. THE LONE AND LEVEL SANDS STRETCH FAR AWAY by Brian Hodge When Marni moves in next door, the stale marriage of Tara and Aidan gets a jolt of adrenaline. Whether it’s tonic or toxic is another matter. Praise for Dark Screams: Volume Three “Well worth picking up and reading . . . If you have not tried the series yet, do yourself a favor and grab a copy of any (or all) of the books for yourself.”—Examiner.com “Freeman and Chizmar have brought their A-game to Dark Screams: Volume Three. If you pick just one installment in this series to read, pick this one.”—LitReactor “Another winner.”—HorrorTalk “A gathering of perfect little bites of fiction . . . As you finish one story you’ll definitely be ready to move on to the next one.”—Sweet Southern Home “Every story has something to offer for horror fans. They’re creepy, thought-provoking, scary and quick reads.”—The Reader’s Hollow “[Horror] needs to hit you in the sweet spot where the amygdala and the cerebrum whisper to each other, where intellect and emotion intertwine, and all of these stories do that, and they do it well.”—Bibliotica “A fun, frightful read . . . If the editors keep raising the bar, I’ll be back again and again.”—Atomic Fangirl

In un''enorme casa nera c''è un mostro che adesca i bambini e li restituisce... in parte. Ma c''è anche Jack, che alla fine contemplerà il volto del serial killer¿

Stephen King & Peter Straub, De Talisman Op een dag staat de twaalfjarige Jack Sawyer aan de kust langs de grijze Atlantische oceaan. Zijn vader is er niet meer, zijn moeder ligt op sterven en de wereld lijkt zinloos. Maar alles verandert als Jack besluit op reis te gaan, op zoek naar de Talisman waarmee hij zijn stervende moeder kan redden. Er volgt een opwindende en inspirerende tocht dwars door Amerika en door de geheimzinnige, parallelle wereld van de Territoria. De Talisman is een fenomenaal, episch verhaal over trouw, bewustwording, angst en mysterie. Jack ontmoet onderweg onschuldigen en monsters, trotseert gevaren en ontdekt diepe waarheden. Laat de queeste beginnen... ''Een klassieker, zeldzaam en verbijsterend, een tocht die de grootste avonturenverhalen ooit verteld weet te evenaren. New York Daily News

Featuring original short stories by Stephen King, Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Norman Partridge, Jack Ketchum, Brian James Freeman, Bentley Little, Ed Gorman, Ronald Kelly, and Steve Rasnic Tem! It was December 1988: George Bush had just defeated Michael Dukakis in the Presidential Election. Pitcher Orel Hershiser and the Los Angeles Dodgers had beaten the Oakland A''s in five games to win the World Series. People were waiting in line at movie theaters to watch Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Tom Clancy''s The Cardinal of the Kremlin and Anne Rice''s The Queen of the Damned were atop the bestseller lists. The most acclaimed genre books of the year were Thomas Harris''s The Silence of the Lambs and Peter Straub''s Koko. And twenty-two year old college student Richard Chizmar had just published the premiere issue of a horror magazine named Cemetery Dance. Twenty-five years later, there have been seventy issues of Cemetery Dance magazine. There have been more than 275 signed Limited Edition hardcovers in the Cemetery Dance book line. There have been awards including the World Fantasy Award, the International Horror Critics Guild Award, and the HWA Board of Trustees Excellence in Specialty Press Publishing Award, as well as nominations for the British Fantasy Award, the American Horror Award, and the Bram Stoker Award, just to name a few. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of that premiere issue of Cemetery Dance, we''re proud to announce Turn Down the Lights, an anthology of authors who helped make the magazine what it is today. These original horror stories by Stephen King, Norman Partridge, Jack Ketchum, Brian James Freeman, Bentley Little, Ed Gorman, Ronald Kelly, Steve Rasnic Tem, Clive Barker, and Peter Straub capture the genuine love of the genre that pushes Cemetery Dance Publications forward year after year. Now, turn down the lights, flip the page, take my hand, and start the dance¿

Originally published: New York: Viking, 1984.

A retired Los Angeles homicide detective living in a rural Wisconsin town, Jack Sawyer is called in to assist the local police chief in solving a gruesome series of murders that causes Jack to experience inexplicable waking nightmares.

From New York Times bestselling author Peter Straub, the tale of a literary sojourn that turns into something far more sinister. Esswood House. Home and estate of the Seneschal family, aristocratic patrons of the literary arts for well over a hundred years. D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Ford Madox Ford, and Henry James were privileged to call themselves guests. There was always talk of a hidden secret in Esswood’s past, and the Seneschal children were often so pale and sickly, but don’t all English manor houses have a few ghost stories to call their own? When Professor William Standish receives the rare honor of an Esswood Fellowship, and the chance to study the estate''s private manuscripts at close hand, he is thrilled beyond his wildest ambitions. But something seems amiss at Esswood House. He hears faint laughter in the halls, the pitter-pattering of small feet in the night; strange faces appear in the windows of the library, and there are those giant dollhouses in the basement . . . Never before published as a separate volume, Mrs. God is a very different kind of ghost story from one of America’s most celebrated authors.

In de jaren zestig was Spencer Mallon een goeroe op een universiteitscampus, charismatisch maar geslepen. Zijn jonge volgelingen aanbaden hem. Bij een door Mallon georganiseerd geheim ritueel ging het mis: een van de deelnemers overleed en de groep viel uit elkaar. De buitenstaander van de groep, de kritische observeerder van toen, is romanschrijver geworden. Hij wil nog steeds begrijpen wat er in die afschuwelijke nacht is gebeurd met zijn vrouw en vrienden, om het ooit misschien te verwerken in een verhaal. Als het verleden tot leven komt door een toevallig voorval beginnen de vroegere vrienden de onbespreekbare gebeurtenissen, die hen al hun hele leven achtervolgen, te onderzoeken. Opnieuw komen ze oog in oog met het kwaad te staan. Een duister verleden is een ijzingwekkende en onvoorspelbare roman over de ogenschijnlijke onschuld van opgroeien in de jaren zestig, maar ook over schuld en boete, over verantwoordelijkheid voor jezelf en de ander. Peter Straub schreef eerder klassiekers, zoals het verfilmde Julia, Het Kwaad en met Stephen King De Talisman en Zwart Huis.

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Story brings the chilling Blue Rose Trilogy to an astonishing close—secrets unearthed, demons revisited, and mysteries solved. • “A masterpiece…. The most intelligent novel of suspense to come along in years.” —The Washington Post Book World Tim Underhill, now an acclaimed novelist, travels back to his hometown of Millhaven, Illinois after he gets a call from John Ransom, an old army buddy. Ransom believes there’s a copycat killer on the loose, mimicking the Blue Rose murders from decades earlier—he thinks his wife could be a potential victim. Underhill seeks out his old friend Tom Pasmore, an aging hermit who has attained minor celebrity as an expert sleuth, to help him investigate. They quickly discover that Millhaven is a town plagued by horrifying secrets and there is a twisted killer on the loose who is far more dangerous than they ever imagined. Expertly tying together the events of Koko and Mystery, The Throat proves Peter Straub to be the master of the suspense novel.

From the bestselling author of Ghost Story, Shadowland, and The Talisman, a novella-length rumination on the nature of evil. A Special Place, Peter Straub’s first published novella, will come to stand as one of the author’s most deeply unsettling works of fiction. A rumination on the nature of evil, the story centers on a boy, Keith Hayward, who is drawn by his nature to an irresistible fascination with death and the taking of life. His father’s brother, the good-looking, suave Uncle Till—the infamous ladykiller, who has led a shadowy career as a local celebrity—recognizes his nephew’s innermost nature and gleefully tutors him in art of doing ill without getting caught. Even a cold-blooded sociopath must learn some lessons in survival, in seems, and Uncle Till is only happy to provide a tutorial, in the latest imaginative and disturbing work from one of America''s most celebrated horror writers.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “One of the most adroit masters of the supernatural thriller” (San Francisco Chronicle) delivers a chilling novel about a man seeking the truth about what happened on a horrifying night on a Midwestern campus in the 1960s. • "Terrifying.... Impossible to put down." —Stephen King On a college campus, a charismatic guru and his young acolytes perform a secret ritual in a local meadow. What happens is a mystery—all that remains is a gruesomely dismembered body and the shattered souls of all who were present. Forty years later, one man seeks to learn about that horrifying night, and to do so he’ll have to force those involved to examine the unspeakable events that have haunted them ever since.

New York City police detective Bob Steele is determined to stop the killing spree of a man who calls himself, among other things, Fielding "Fee" Bandolier, a Vietnam veteran whose many victims'' voices talk to both men. At the same time, the evil within an abandoned pub in the Midwest, The Green Woman, calls both men to meet their fates within its walls.

A graphic interpretation of a best-selling work by the award-winning authors follows the desperate quest of young Jack Sawyer between Earth and a mysterious parallel world called The Territories.

Peter Straub presents four stories that are offshoots of the fictional universe created in his Blue Rose trilogy. Each of the stories stands alone, but together they shine a revelatory light on the novels that inspired them.

The second volume of Peter Straub’s pathbreaking two-volume anthology American Fantastic Tales picks up the story in 1940 and provides persuasive evidence that the decades since then have seen an extraordinary flowering. While continuing to explore the classic themes of horror and fantasy, successive generations of writers—including Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Charles Beaumont, Stephen King, Steven Millhauser, and Thomas Ligotti—have opened up the field to new subjects, new styles, and daringly fresh expansions of the genre’s emotional and philosophical underpinnings. For many of these writers, the fantastic is simply the best available tool for describing the dislocations and newly hatched terrors of the modern era, from the nightmarish post-apocalyptic savagery of Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” to proliferating identities set deliriously adrift in Tim Powers’ “Pat Moore.” “At its core,” writes editor Peter Straub, “the fantastic is a way of seeing.” In place of gothic trappings, the post-war masters of the fantastic often substitute an air of apparent normality. The surfaces of American life—department store displays in John Collier’s “Evening Primrose,” tar-paper roofs seen from an el train in Fritz Leiber’s “Smoke Ghost,” the balcony of a dilapidated movie theater in Tennessee Williams’ “The Mysteries of the Joy Rio”—become invested with haunting presences. The sphere of family life is transformed, in Davis Grubb’s “Where the Woodbine Twineth” or Richard Matheson’s “Prey,” into an arena of eerie menace. Dramas of madness, malevolent temptation, and vampiristic appropriation play themselves out against the backdrop of modern urban life in John Cheever’s “Torch Song” and Shirley Jackson’s unforgettable “The Daemon Lover.” Nearly half the stories collected in this volume were published in the last two decades, including work by Michael Chabon, M. Rickert, Brian Evenson, Kelly Link, and Benjamin Percy: writers for whom traditional genre boundaries have ceased to exist, and who have brought the fantastic into the mainstream of contemporary writing. The forty-two stories in this second volume of American Fantastic Tales provide an irresistible journey into the phantasmagoric underside of the American imagination. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Story comes “an inspired thriller” (The Washington Post) about four Vietnam vets linked by a shattering secret and their global hunt to track down a brutal killer. Koko. Only four men knew what it meant. Now they must stop it. They were Vietnam vets—a doctor, a lawyer, a working stiff, and a writer. Very different from each other, they are nonetheless linked by a shared history and a devastating secret. Now, they have been reunited and are about to embark on a quest that will take them from Washington, D.C., to the graveyards and fleshpots of the Far East to the human jungle of New York, searching for someone from the past who has risen from the darkness to kill and kill and kill.

WINNER OF THE BRAM STOKER AWARD • After a grotesque accident, a famous author discovers that her reality is not what it seems in this “imaginative, intricate, and electrifying” (Associated Press) horror novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Story. “A powerful and arresting foray into the dark fantastic.”—The Washington Post Book World Willy Patrick, respected author of the award-winning young adult novel In the Night Room, thinks she is losing her mind. She is drawn helplessly into the parking lot of a warehouse, knowing somehow that her daughter, Holly, is being held in the building. But this is impossible—Willy’s daughter is dead. On that same day, author Timothy Underhill, who has been struggling with a new book about a troubled young woman, is confronted with the ghost of his nine-year-old sister, April. Soon after, he begins to receive eerie, fragmented emails from people he knew in his youth—people now dead. Like his sister, they want urgently to tell him something. When Willy and Tim meet, the frightening parallels between Willy’s tragic loss and the story in Tim’s manuscript suggest that they must join forces to confront the evils surrounding them.

A woman commits suicide for no apparent reason. A week later, her son– fifteen-year-old Mark Underhill–vanishes. His uncle, novelist Timothy Underhill, searches his hometown of Millhaven for clues that might help unravel this horrible dual mystery. He soon learns that a pedophilic murderer is on the loose in the vicinity, and that shortly before his mother’s suicide, Mark had become obsessed with an abandoned house where he imagined the killer might have taken refuge. No mere empty building, the house whispers from attic to basement with the echoes of a long-hidden true-life horror story, and Tim Underhill comes to fear that in investigating its unspeakable history, Mark stumbled across its last and greatest secret: a ghostly lost girl who may have coaxed the needy, suggestible boy into her mysterious domain.

A riveting novel that “combines the intellectual-puzzle mystery with a powerful vein of psycho-thriller suspense” (The Washington Post) and “moves like an express train” (Stephen King), from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Story. They are dying, one by one. Wealthy, middle-aged women in an exclusive Connecticut suburb. Their murderer remains at large. Nora Chancel, wife of publishing scion Davey Chancel, fears she may be next. After all, her past has branded her a victim. Then Davey tells Nora a surreal story about the Hellfire Club, where years before he met an obsessed fan of Chancel House''s most successful book, Night Journey—a book that has a strange history of its own. Suddenly terror engulfs Nora: She must defend herself against fantastic accusations even as a madman lies in wait. And when he springs, she will embark on a night journey that will put her victimhood to rest forever, dead or alive.