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John Saul
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John Saul's first novel, Suffer the Children, published in 1977, was an immediate million-copy bestseller. He has since written nineteen successive bestselling novels of suspense, including The Right Hand of Evil, The Presence, Black Lightning, Guardian, and The Homing. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling serial thriller The Blackstone Chronicles, initially published in six installments, but now available in one complete volume. Mr. Saul divides his time between Seattle, Washington, and Maui, Hawaii. |
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When the Conways move into their ancestral home in Louisiana after the death of an estranged aunt, it is with the promise of a new beginning. But the house has a life of its own. Abandoned for the last forty years, surrounded by thick trees and a stifling sense of melancholy, the sprawling Victorian house seems to swallow up the sunlight. Deep within the cold cellar and etched into the very walls is a long, dark history of the Conway name--a grim bloodline poisoned by suicide, strange disappearances, voodoo rituals, and rumors of murder. But the family knows nothing of the soul-shattering secrets that snake through generations of their past. They do not know that terror awaits them. For with each generation of the Conways comes a hellish day of reckoning. . .
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Fifteen-year-old Matthew Moore seems to have it all: a loving mother, Joan; a caring stepfather, Bill, who treats Matt like his own son; residence at a sprawling estate in Connecticut; and a growing relationship with the most beautiful girl at school. All signs point to a bright future. Until fate intervenes.
A sudden fire leaves Matt's ailing grandmother homeless. After moving in with the family, the caustic Emily insists on recreating the bedroom of her deceased daughter, the favored child who died tragically more than a decade ago. Joan and her older sister had always shared an uneasy bond and a shameful secret that would forever join them . . . even from beyond the grave.
Then Matt's life insidiously begins to change. He starts to smell his aunt?s pungent perfume, so strong and immediate that it is as if she has returned from the dead. At night, he finds himself haunted by nightmares of unimaginable terror. While his grandmother drives a wedge between his once devoted parents, Matt transforms from a gregarious teenager to a hostile loner, tortured by chilling memories and prone to fits of rage.
Then a shocking tragedy shatters the family beyond repair, propelling Joan and Emily into a final, explosive confrontation . . . a showdown in which old wounds will be viciously torn open-and a horrific shadow from the past will spring an implacable life of its own, clawing toward Matt with the ferocious inevitability of death itself.
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