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Published Oct 2014
288 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen Child comes a hypnotic literary horror novel about a young boy trapped inside his own world, whose drawings blur the lines between fantasy and reality.
Ever since he nearly drowned in the ocean three years earlier, ten-year-old Jack Peter Keenan has been deathly afraid to venture outdoors. Refusing to leave his home in a small coastal town in Maine, Jack Peter spends his time drawing monsters. When those drawings take on a life of their own, no one is safe from the terror they inspire. His mother, Holly, begins to hear strange sounds in the night coming from the ocean, and she seeks answers from the local Catholic priest and his Japanese housekeeper, who fill her head with stories of shipwrecks and ghosts. His father, Tim, wanders the beach, frantically searching for a strange apparition running wild in the dunes. And the boy's only friend, Nick, becomes helplessly entangled in the eerie power of the drawings. While those around Jack Peter are haunted by what they think they see, only he knows the truth behind the frightful occurrences as the outside world encroaches upon them all.
In the tradition of The Turn of the Screw, Keith Donohue's The Boy Who Drew Monsters is a mesmerizing tale of psychological terror and imagination run wild, a perfectly creepy read for a dark night.
"This is a traditional horror story - something you could easily imagine Graham Masterton writing - with a delicious twist near the end that makes you rethink everything you've just read." - Booklist
"With such a spooky novel, it's almost too much to hope for a good ending, but Donohue manages to surprise and satisfy nonetheless. A sterling example of the new breed of horror: unnerving and internal with just the right number of bumps in the night." - Kirkus
"The ghostly influence of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw haunts this chilling novel by Donohue (The Stolen Child)… Donohue is an adept creator of atmosphere… A brisk and winningly creepy narrative." - Publishers Weekly
"The novel unfolds through rich prose and a deeply imagined story. The final page - the final sentence, really - comes as a clever surprise, but one that resonates soundly. Fans of Donohue's first novel, The Stolen Child, will be pleased. Also recommended for readers of Joe Hill." - Library Journal
"It will raise the hairs on the back of your neck. Keith Donohue manages to peer into the darkest nightmares of childhood and beckon forth the monsters from the closet...Atmospheric and haunting." - Eowyn Ivey, New York Times bestselling author of The Snow Child
"An eerie, unsettling novel about the monsters outside your door...and the ones inside all of us. Donohue fills his pages with intimacy and dread, and whips up an ending that'll take your breath away." - Christopher Golden, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Snowblind
"The Boy Who Drew Monsters left me breathless and reeling, questioning the line between what is real and what is imagined — and realizing that the meeting of the two is where true terror dwells." - Jennifer McMahon, New York Times bestselling author of The Winter People
"Keith Donohue has crafted a brooding, Serlingesque tale of tragedy, heartbreak, and the things that go bump in the night. Creepy, nostalgic, and understated, The Boy Who Drew Monsters is a tale meant for the dark of night, but most will want to enjoy it with all of the lights on." - C. Robert Cargill, author of Dreams and Shadows
This information about The Boy Who Drew Monsters 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.
Photo: Cade Martin
Keith Donohue's novels include the national bestseller The Stolen Child, Centuries of June, and Angels of Destruction. He also has written reviews for the Washington Post. Donohue has a Ph.D. in English with a specialization in modern Irish literature and wrote the introduction to the Complete Novels of Flann O’Brien. He lives in Maryland near Washington, DC.
Author Interview
Link to Keith Donohue's Website
Name Pronunciation
Keith Donohue: don-a-hew
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