Description

A DARK MATTER

by Peter Straub.

Free Signed Illustrated Plate by Peter Straub.

REVIEWS:

Peter Straubs new novel is a terrifying story of innocents-high school students in the turbulent sixties-who stumble into horrors far beyond their understanding. A Dark Matter is populated with vivid, sympathetic characters, and driven by terrors both human and supernatural. It’s the kind of book that’s impossible to put down once it has been picked up. It kept me reading far into the night. Straub builds otherworldly terror without ever losing touch with his attractive cast of youngsters, who age beautifully. Put this one high on your list. --Stephen King

[A] tour de force from bestseller Straub…Brilliant in its orchestration and provocative in its speculations, this novel ranks as one of the finest tales of modern horror.-- Starred Review. Publishers Weekly.

A devastatingly good novel. In its investigation of a dark ritual that casts a decades-long shadow, A DARK MATTER makes you question all you thought you knew about horror and about literature. But it goes well beyond that: it messes with your sense of reality and then, just when youre getting your bearings, scrambles it again. --Brian Evenson, author of The Open Curtain.

OVERVIEW: 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 Straubs many ardent fans, and win him legions more.

2010 Doubleday. Release Date February 9th, 416 pages. List price $26.00.