Peter Straub

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.

In life, not every sin goes unpunished.GHOST STORYFor four aging men in the terror-stricken town of Milburn, New York, an act inadvertently carried out in their youth has come back to haunt them. Now they are about to learn what happens to those who believe they can bury the past -- and get away with murder.

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.

Two monstrous evils.This 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 a child's play.

They are dying, one by 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 She must defend herself against fantastic accusations even as a madman lies in wait. And when he springs, Nora will embark on a night journey that will put her fears to rest forever, dead or alive. . . .

Nancy Underhill commits suicide for no apparent reason. A week later, her son -- fifteen-year-old Mark -- vanishes. The boy's 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 Nancy'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 basement to attic with the echoes of a long hidden true-life horror story, and Tim 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.

After a tragic accident which he barely survives, Tom Pasmore develops an obsession with death--an obsession which leads him to investigate two murders--one in the past and one in the present. And during his investigation, Pasmore learns more than anyone needs--or deserves--to know!

The award-winning new supernatural thriller from the acclaimed author of Ghost Story, Koko, The Throat and The Talisman.Every year on his birthday, Ned Dunstan has a paralysing seizure in which he is forced to witness scenes of ruthless slaughter perpetrated by a mysterious figure in black whom he calls Mr X. Now, with his birthday fast approaching, Ned has been drawn back to his home town of Edgerton, Illinois, by a premonition that his mother is dying. On her deathbed, she imparts to him the name of his long-absent father and warns him that he is in grave danger. Despite her foreboding, he embarks on a search through Edgerton’s past for the truth behind his own identity and that of his entirely fantastic family. But when Ned becomes the lead suspect in three violent deaths, he begins to realize that he is not the only one who has come home…'Mr. X marks Straub's triumphant return to the tale of the paranormal and the supernatural....There are several scenes of utter, ghastly, hide-your-eyes horror; when Peter Straub turns on all his jets, no one in the scream factory can equal him. The plot is challenging, the characters are intriguing in their complexity, and the language is a delight.'Stephen King'No one is better than Straub at having whole communities rocked by the forces of wickedness.' Observer

The continuing mystery of the Blue Rose Murders draws Tim Underhill back to his home town, where he will help a friend accused of murdering his wife clear his name. By the author of Koko. Reissue.

The incomparable master of horror and suspense returns with a powerful, brilliantly terrifying novel that redefines the genre in original and unexpected ways.The charismatic and cunning Spenser Mallon is a campus guru in the 1960s, attracting the devotion and demanding sexual favors of his young acolytes. After he invites his most fervent followers to attend a secret ritual in a local meadow, the only thing that remains is a gruesomely dismembered body—and the shattered souls of all who were present.Years later, one man attempts to understand what happened to his wife and to his friends by writing a book about this horrible night, and it’s through this process that they begin to examine the unspeakable events that have bound them in ways they cannot fathom, but that have haunted every one of them through their lives. As each of the old friends tries to come to grips with the darkness of the past, they find themselves face-to-face with the evil triggered so many years earlier. Unfolding through the individual stories of the fated group’s members, A Dark Matter is an electric, chilling, and unpredictable novel that will satisfy Peter Straub's many ardent fans, and win him legions more.

In his latest soul-chilling novel, bestselling author Peter Straub tells of a famous children's book author who, in the wake of a grotesque accident, realizes that the most basic facts of her existence, including her existence itself, have come into question.Willy Patrick, the respected author of the award-winning young-adult novel In the Night Room , thinks she is losing her mind-again. One day, she is drawn helplessly into the parking lot of a warehouse. She knows somehow that her daughter, Holly, is being held in the building, and she has an overwhelming need to rescue her. But what Willy knows is impossible, for her daughter is dead.On the 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 e-mails that he finally realizes are from people he knew in his youth-people now dead. Like his sister, they want urgently to tell him something. When Willy and Timothy 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.

In a house in London a woman starts a new life, trying to put tragedy behind her. Then a pretty blonde child runs into view, bringing with her an inexplicable suggestion of evil.Once Julia Lofting had a husband and a daughter. But everything has changed since she bolted from her marriage, in flight from the unbearable truth of her daughter's death. For Julia, there is no escape. Another child awaits, another mother suffers, and a circle of the damned gathers around her. The haunting has begun . . .

This spectacular collection of 13 dark, haunting tales by bestselling author Straub exposes the terrors that hide beneath the surface of the ordinary world, behind the walls of houses without doors. "Straub at his spellbinding best".--Publishers Weekly.

One summer night, a boy and his beautiful cousin plunge naked into the moonlit waters of a rural quarry. Twenty years later, the boy, now grown, flees the wreckage of his life and returns to Arden, Wisconsin, in search of everything he has lost.But for Miles Teagarden, the landscape he had known so well has turned eerie and threatening. And the love he shared has become very, very deadly . . .

A new collection of award-winning short stories from the acclaimed master of horror -- author of the bestselling MR X, KOKO, THE TALISMAN and BLACK HOUSE. Welcome to another kind of terror as Peter Straub leads us into the outer reaches of the psyche. Here the master of the macabre is at his absolute best in seven exquisite tales of living, dying and the terror that lies in between! No one tells a story like Peter Straub. He dazzles with the richness of his plots and the eloquence of his prose. He startles you into laughter in the face of events so dark that you begin to question your own moral compass. Then he reduces you to jelly by spinning a tale so terrifying -- and surprising -- that you have to sleep with the lights on. Now, with these seven acclaimed stories he has given us his finest and most imaginatively unsettling collection yet. 'WHEN STRAUB TURNS ON ALL HIS JETS, NO ONE IN THE SCREAM FACTORY CAN EQUAL HIM.' STEPHEN KING

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 the art of doing ill without getting caught. Even a cold-blooded sociopath must learn some lessons in survival, it seems and Uncle Till is only too happy to provide a tutorial, in the latest imaginative and disturbing work from one of America's most celebrated horror writers.

Another chilling story from the Houses Without Doors collection. Presented with the research opportunity of a lifetime, a college professor leaves his pregnant wife in the States and heads for a British country estate. But nothing is as it appears, and soon the professor finds himself in a frightening situation.

When a graduate student with a passion for jazz arrived in New York to discover that a legendary saxophonist he had assumed long dead is not only still alive but playing in an East Village club, he spends night after night in awe-struck attendance.And when the legend grants him an interview on Halloween, he jumps at the opportunity. What unfolds is an endless night filled with an extraordinary story told by a dying master: a story centered upon the Halloween night of his eleventh year, a white woman screaming in a shanty town, a killer and an unidentified man fleeing with a strange bundle in his arms.

In this haunting tale of innocence and evil, master storyteller Peter Straub uncovers the dark side of human nature.

An American icon renowned for his bestselling novels, Peter Straub displays his full and stunning range in this crowning collection. He has consistently subverted the boundaries of genre for years, transcending horror and suspense to unlock the dark, unsettling, and troubling dissonances that exist on the edges of our perception. Straub’s fiction cracks the foundation of reality and opens our eyes to an unblinking experience of true horror, told in his inimitable and lush style with skill, wit, and impeccable craft. With uncanny precision, Straub writes of the city and of the Midwest, of the depraved and of the righteous, of the working class and of the wealthy—nothing and no one is safe from the ever-present darkness that he understands so well. “Blue Rose” follows the cycles of violence and power through the most innocent among us, leading to a conclusion that is audacious and devastating. In the darkly satirical masterpiece “Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff,” a stern estate lawyer known as the Deacon hires a pair of “Private Detectives Extraordinaire” to investigate and seek revenge on his unfaithful wife. “The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine” follows a man and his much younger lover as they explore their decadent and increasingly sinister fantasies aboard a luxurious yacht on the remotest stretch of the Amazon River. Interior Darkness brings together sixteen stories from twenty-five years of dazzling excellence. It is a thrilling, highly entertaining, and terrifying testament to the prodigious talent of Peter Straub.From the Hardcover edition.

New York Times best-selling author Peter Straub resurrects his most sinister creation, Fielding “Fee” Bandolier, the unstoppable serial killer last seen in Straub’s bestseller The Throat. Aging and tired of a life devoted to death, Fee is preparing to end his long career of bloodshed. Bob Steele is a disillusioned New York detective out for redemption and to him redemption means a one-man crusade to stop Fielding Bandolier. Steele’s father cruelly named him after a Hollywood cowboy hero. The name has been a curse because Bob has very little hero in him. But he’s going to give it one last try. Cop and killer fi nally face off in a mysterious midwestern pub, “The Green Woman Tavern.” And in that abandoned place, an unspeakable evil stronger than either of them lies waiting to seal the fates of both men.

Peter Straub's Blue Rose trilogy (Koko, Mystery, and The Throat) is one of the landmark accomplishments of modern popular fiction. Ranging from the Caribbean to Vietnam to the American Midwest and spanning decades of tumultuous history, these books are both unforgettable narratives and indelible portraits of people in extremis, struggling to survive in a world marked by grief, loss, pain, trauma, and homicidal madness. The four stories gathered here are offshoots of that larger fictional universe. Each one stands entirely on its own. Together, they shine a revelatory light on the mysteries and hidden corners of the novels that inspired them."Blue Rose" recounts a defining moment in the childhood of Koko's Harry Beevers, the moment when the ten-year-old Harry discovers his capacity for violence and brutality. "The Juniper Tree" describes, with almost unbearable clarity, a lonely young boy's encounter with adult betrayal, and with the darker aspects of human sexuality. "The Ghost Village" takes us to the phantasmagoric landscape of Vietnam, where the barriers between the living and the dead begin to dissolve, to mesmerizing effect. "Bunny is Good Bread" is arguably Straub's single most harrowing story. With relentless attention to detail, it anatomizes the creation of a human monster through abuse, cruelty, and neglect.These disturbing, beautifully written stories have a moral weight and emotional resonance that only the finest fiction achieves. They are the clear product of a master storyteller at the very top of his game. No one who reads them is likely to forget them, or come away unchanged.

The Buffalo Hunter chronicles the fixations of a 35-year-old who numbs his fear of women in some very unusual ways...

Offered for the first time in a collected format, this selection of short stories features five gripping tales by one of the horror genre's most literate and endlessly inventive writers, Peter Straub - "Little Red's Tango," "Lapland, or Film Noir," "The Geezers," "Donald Duck," and "Mr. Aickman's Air Rifle."

''Perdido,'' a fragment from a never completed longer work, is a rare and unexpected gift for Peter Straub's legion of fans. Even in this fragmentary form, it offers the sort of vivid, unexpected pleasures that only the finest imaginative fiction can provide.On one level, ''Perdido'' tells the story of a troubled family: a discontented husband and wife and the teenaged son who was--but is no longer--a musical prodigy. On another, it is the story of the isolated Norwegian resort known as Perdido, and of the impossible, dreamlike things that happen there. Perdido is a place where the rules of ordinary life no longer apply, where reality is malleable and infinitely strange. It is a place where ''you get what you didn't know you wanted'' and where lives are altered forever. For the unhappy couple invited to attend--and for the teenaged son awaiting their return--it is the place where a marriage ends and a life filled with alternate possibilities begins. Mysterious, evocative, and always superbly written, ''Perdido'' offers readers something genuinely special: a visit to an imaginary landscape that only Peter Straub could have created.

Acclaimed pianist-composer Elliott Denmark returns to his home town to find the town itself torn apart and his own feelings torn between his wife and a woman who exerts a mystical power over him

Over twenty years in the making, SIDES represents the first ever collection of non-fiction by bestselling author Peter Straub. Featuring introductions, essays, afterwords, and even a "frivolity" along with the collected works of Putney Tyson Ridge, Straub's "self-invented human speed bump and alter ego" this collection presents a rare glimpse into the author's tastes and personal musings on topics ranging from The Stepford Wives and Dracula to Lawrence Block and Stephen King.Also included is "The Fantasy of Everyday Life", Straub's Guest-of-Honor speech at the 1998 International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts, and "Mom", an essay that appeared in a book that combined short stories written by mother-son partnerships with essays written by male writers about their mothers. The "frivolity" here "Why Electricman Lives in New York" was written for an anthology celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of New York Is Book Country.This long awaited collection closes with Putney Tyson Ridge's reviews and commentaries on every Peter Straub book published since the 1970s.SIDES is a unique and exclusive Cemetery Dance book, with no other editions planned anywhere in the world!