The Hour Before Dark
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3.9 • 7 Ratings
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Home is where the haunt is.
"Fans of Stephen King and Dean Koontz will appreciate this atmospheric gem." ★★★★★ "Kept me on the edge of my seat!"★★★★★
A children's game played in the dark brings on a terrifying rampage in this gothic horror page-turner by the NY Times bestselling author of Neverland and The Children's Hour. After the brutal murder of a loved one, Nemo Raglan must return to the New England island he thought he'd escaped for good…and the shadowy home called Hawthorn.
"Douglas Clegg has become the new star in horror fiction, and The Hour Before Dark is his best and most exciting novel to date. This is pure imagination, and it is wearing speed skates." -- Peter Straub, New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Story and, with Stephen King, The Talisman.
"A classic of modern supernatural horror."
*"...An eerie psychological tale of supernatural horror that builds suspense gradually as the characters slowly peel back the layers of their past and face the terrors of their shared childhood. Clegg approaches horror with a stark and vital simplicity that is utterly convincing. Fans of Stephen King and Dean Koontz will appreciate this atmospheric gem." -- Library Journal.
"I was compelled to keep turning the pages as fear...raised my pulse to racing level from cover to cover." -- DarkEcho.
From the Publishers Weekly Starred Review:
"Suspenseful and relentlessly spooky, told in economical prose yet peopled by characters as fully realized as one’s own blood kin, this is at once the most artful and most mainstream tale yet from one of horror’s brightest lights."
"... A dark,psychologically astute novel that pushes beyond the horror genre
and into raw suspense...THE HOUR BEFORE DARK is a powerful and deeply engaging novel of disturbance and redemption...highly recommended to any reader who enjoys Stephen King, Dean Koontz, or Pat Conroy." -- The BookReporter.
"In his finest novel to date, Clegg establishes himself firmly as one of the leading authors in the horror genre...Hold onto your chair; The Hour Before Dark is a powerhouse of a read." -- Cemetery Dance Magazine.
A gripping read that is refreshingly character-driven, yet still produces a palpable sense of dread." - Fangoria.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Alongside the dominant stream of horror fiction that, at whatever level of artistic achievement, relies on shock and gore, runs a quieter stream that relies on atmosphere and inference for its unsettling effects (think Machen, Blackwood, sometimes Ramsey Campbell). Clegg (The Infinite; Naomi) has added a superior new title to this latter tradition, with a psychologically astute and genuinely shivery story of a young man who returns to his ancestral home on a remote island off Massachusetts. Nemo Raglan, a failed novelist, is back at Hawthorn, on Burnley Island, because his father, Gordie, has been found slaughtered in the family's smokehouse. Also at Hawthorn are Nemo's errant younger brother, Bruno, and their sister, Brooke, a high-strung artist who'd been living with Dad; the siblings' mother had disappeared from the family when they were children. The killer has, weirdly, left no traces and thus no clues; but then much about Hawthorn and the siblings is weird, particularly the game they played as children, a risky form of mind-projection taught them by their father, who used it as a POW, whereby they were able to explore worlds known and unknown. As brothers and sister get reacquainted and ponder the murder, the air grows tense but also dark. Nemo senses an unseen presence; is the house haunted? Clegg delves deep and precisely into the familial ties that bind but also sunder even as he celebrates the magical isolation of a New England island so adrift from the mainland as to be its own planet. Suspenseful and relentlessly spooky, told in economical prose yet peopled by characters as fully realized as one's own blood kin, this is at once the most artful and most mainstream tale yet from one of horror's brightest lights.
