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Published Feb 2010
416 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
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 Straub's many ardent fans, and win him legions more.
"Starred Review. Brilliant in its orchestration and provocative in its speculations, this novel ranks as one of the finest tales of modern horror." - Publishers Weekly
"Bram Stoker Award winner Straub's (Ghost Story; Lost Boy; Lost Girl) latest offering in new wave horror will thrill his many fans and attract new readers. A very good choice for all libraries." - Library Journal
"Straub's last few fantasies have been ever more baroque, but this tall, dark tale beats them all for heaven-storming scale and wheels within wheels." - Kirkus Reviews
"Peter Straub's 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
"Part Rashomon, part The Turn of the Screw. Peter Straub may well be the most important voice in suspense fiction today." - Lincoln Child
"American master Peter Straub takes the sweep of our freaky history over the
past forty years, subjects it to all the elegant gifts of madness and arts of
haunting of which he is the wicked king, and finds himself in possession of a
masterpiece." - Michael Chabon
"[A] dazzling a literary performance as anything Straub has ever written." -
Booklist
"I've been reading Peter Straub since I was a teenager, and his work is
hardwired into my brain. A Dark Matter contains echoes of all that has
been great about Straub's previous work and builds upon it. This Rashomon-like
tale is as spooky and frightening as anything he has written, but it's also an
intense and moving celebration of love. Out of the darkness comes, ultimately, a
surprising and haunting sense of joy." - Dan Chaon, author of Await Your
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This information about A Dark Matter was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Peter Straub is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels. Two of his most recent, Lost Boy Lost Girl and In the Night Room, are winners of the Bram Stoker Award. He lives in New York City.
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