Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Oct 2011
400 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
In a dusty corner of a basement in a rambling Victorian house in northern New Hampshire, a door has long been sealed shut with 39 six-inch-long carriage bolts.
The home's new owners are Chip and Emily Linton and their twin ten-year-old daughters. Together they hope to rebuild their lives there after Chip, an airline pilot, has to ditch his 70-seat regional jet in Lake Champlain due to double engine failure. The body count? Thirty-nine.
What follows is a riveting ghost story with all the hallmarks readers have come to expect from bestselling, award-winning novelist Chris Bohjalian: a palpable sense of place, meticulous research, an unerring sense of the demons that drive us, and characters we care about deeply. The difference this time? Some of those characters are dead.
"Starred Review. A page-turner of uncommon depth. Guilt, egotism, and fear all play parts in this genre-bending novel." - Booklist
"Starred Review. A genre-defying novel, both a compelling story of a family in trauma and a psychological thriller that is truly frightening... Fans of Alice Sebold and Margaret Atwood will find similar appeal here." - Library Journal
"Compelling... a practical 'magick' horror story with a not-entirely-satisfying resolution." - Kirkus Reviews
"A gripping paranormal thriller... Bohjalian is a master, and the slow-mounting dread makes this a frightful ride." - Publishers Weekly
"Shades of The Shining make for a haunting tale... A modern-day ghost story worth losing sleep over." - Family Circle
"Put a haunted man in a haunted house... and you have a Halloween hair-raiser. But it's more than that. Bohjalian, with a dozen well-received novels to his credit, understands trauma: how long it takes to recover from unimaginable pain, and how people who have never experienced it rarely understand." - Tim Clark, Yankee Magazine
This information about The Night Strangers 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.
Chris Bohjalian is the author of twenty books, including The Guest Room; Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands; The Sandcastle Girls; Skeletons at the Feast; The Double Bind; and Midwives which was a number one New York Times bestseller and a selection of Oprah's Book Club. Chris's work has been translated into more than thirty languages, and three novels have become movies (Secrets of Eden, Midwives, and Past the Bleachers). Chris lives in Vermont and can be found at www.chrisbohjalian.com or on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Litsy, and Goodreads.
Author Interview
Link to Chris Bohjalian's Website
Name Pronunciation
Chris Bohjalian: boh-ZHAHL-ee-yen
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