Darkness - Softcover

John Saul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553403400 ISBN 13: 9780553403404

Publisher: Bantam, 1993

Synopsis

Villejeune, Florida. A secluded little town at the edge of a vast, eerie swamp. Far from prying eyes. Far from the laws of civilization. Here folks live by their own rules -- dark rites of altars and infants, candles and blood.

Years ago the Andersons left town with a dream. Now they are back. To live out a nightmare. Something has been waiting for them. Something unspeakably evil. It feeds on the young and the innocent. And soon it will draw their teenage daughter into its unholy embrace....

About this title

About the Author:

John Saul’s first novel, Suffer the Children, was an immediate million-copy bestseller. His other bestselling suspense novels include Perfect Nightmare, Black Creek Crossing, and The Presence. 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. Saul divides his time between Seattle and Hawaii.

From Publishers Weekly:

The prologue of veteran horror writer Saul's ( Second Child ) new novel is wonderfully scary: A pregnant teenage "swamp rat" of the Everglades, spying on a secret meeting of "the Dark Man" and "his children," sees a friend offer up her newborn baby, whereupon the masked Dark Man plunges a knife into the infant. Right after that, the teenager's husband promises to deliver his own child "the night he's born." The story proper begins when 16-year-old Kelly Anderson, all her life having suffered nightmares of a menacing old man and now sure she's pregnant by him, tries to kill herself. She recovers and moves from Atlanta with her adoptive parents to her grandfather's house just north of the Everglades. Kelly becomes friends with Michael, her age and also adopted, who admits to similar nightmares and a sense of dread. Michael's adoptive mother, meanwhile, feels a strange kinship to Kelly. The secrets of the Dark Man--his identity and his fountain-of-youth formula--are revealed halfway through the book, and thenceforth the story slides into descriptions of relatively tame to-and-fro-ing, mostly in the swamp, and the revolting revenge of "the children" on a group of nasty but well-preserved old men. Saul's ending is cozily sentimental.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0553403400
• ISBN 13: 9780553403404
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400