The charismatic and cunning Spenser Mallon is a campus guru in the 1960s, attracting the devotion and demanding sexual favours 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 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 throughout 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 this Bram Stoker Award-winning chiller, a children's book author discovers frightening parallels between her loss and a manuscript by a struggling horror writer, who suggests they must join forces to confront the evils surrounding them.

«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.»

Koko. Only four men knew what it meant. All were as different as men could be. And now they are joined together again on a quest that could take them from the graveyards of the Far East to the human jungle of New York, hunting an inhuman ghost of the past risen from nightmare darkness to kill.

Every year on his birthday, Ned Dunstan is cursed with visions of horror committed by a savage figure he calls Mr. X. This year, Ned's visions will become flesh and blood — as a journey into his family's past brings him face-to-face with his darkest nightmares.

A riveting new thriller from the award-winning author of Ghost Story. Nora, a bored housewife, married to a weakling of a husband, is kidnapped at gunpoint by Dick Dart, a man who is suspected of committing four recent murders. Now Nora can stay alive only by feeding Dart's ego and outwitting him without seeming to do so.

In life, not every sin goes unpunished. GHOST STORY 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. Peter Straub's classic bestseller is a work of superb horror (The Washington Post Book World) that, like any good ghost story, stands the test of time — and conjures our darkest fears and nightmares.