Peter Straub

Spencer Mallon was a campus guru in the 1960s, attracting the devotion, and sexual favours, of his young acolytes. He invited his most fervent followers to attend a secret ritual, and afterwards the only thing that remained was a gruesomely dismembered body - and the shattered souls of all who were present. Lee Harwell was not one of Spencer Mallon's devotees, but his curiosity about that fateful night haunts him. He decides to write a book about...

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...

In life, not every sin goes unpunished. For 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. In a seedy motel in Florida, a young man holds captive a little girl in a soiled pink dress. He is anxious, tormented, introspective. She is calm, passive,...

From the incomparable master of horror and suspense comes an electrifying collection of contemporary literary horror, with stories from twenty-five writers representing today’s most talented voices in the genre.

Horror writing is usually associated with formulaic gore, but New Wave horror writers have more in common with the wildly inventive, evocative spookiness of Edgar Allan Poe than with the sometimes-predictable hallmarks...

Jack Sawyer, who traveled to a parallel universe to save his mother and is now a retired homicide detective, helps a Wisconsin policeman track down a serial killer, who abducts and murders children.

A near-fatal traffic accident and a resulting obsession with death drive Tom Pasmore to join his neighbor, famous retired detective Lamont von Heilitz, in investigating two very different murders.

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, he is thrilled beyond his wildest ambitions. But something seems slightly off at Esswood House. He hears faint laughter in the halls, the pitter-pattering of small feet in...

A boy, Keith Hayward, is drawn to an irresistible fascination with death and the taking of life. His Uncle Till, who has led a shadowy career as local celebrity "Ladykiller," recognizes his nephew's nature and tutors him in the art of doing ill without getting caught.

Chronicles the efforts of Delirium and her brother, Dream, to journey through the world of the waking in an effort to locate their missing sibling, Destruction--a journey that will change the Endless forever.