Black River Orchard
A masterpiece of horror from the bestselling author of Wanderers and The Book of Accidents
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
A small town is transformed by dark magic when strange apple trees begin bearing fruit in this new masterpiece of horror from the bestselling author of Wanderers and The Book of Accidents.
It's autumn in Harrow, but something is changing in the town besides the season.
Because in that town there is an orchard, and in that orchard grows a new sort of apple: strange and beautiful, with skin so red it's nearly black.
Take a bite of one of these apples and you will you will become stronger. More vital. More yourself, you will believe. But soon your appetite for the apples and their peculiar gifts will keep growing - and become darker.
This is what happens when the townsfolk discover the secret of the orchard. Soon it seems that everyone is consumed by an obsession with the magic of the apples . . . and what's the harm, if it is making them all happier, more confident, more powerful?
But now the leaves are falling. The days grow darker. And a stranger has come to town, a stranger who knows Harrow's secrets. Because it's harvest time, and the town will soon reap what it has sown.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Wendig (the Wanderers series) wows with this wildly unsettling horror tale set in Bucks County, Pa. When Calla Paxson was 12, her father, Dan, came home with a shriveled apple core that resembled a human finger, declaring that he would use the core to create an orchard that would make their family's future and fortune. Five years later, the orchard has produced enough fruit for Dan to set up a stall at the town market, where his Ruby Slipper Apples (so named by Calla), are an unexpected hit, bringing in far more money than anticipated. Some consumers even come to consider themselves addicted to the unique fruit, which offers "a near-perfect balance of tartness and sweetness—that sour, tongue-scrubbing feel of a pineapple, but one that has first been run through a trench of warm honey." Gradually, however, Wendig reveals that something darker lurks beneath the orchard, its weirdness affecting the family, as when one of the orchard's trees impales two baby birds in their nest, and Dan, struck by a brief violent madness, snaps the mother dove's neck. Wendig is brilliant at slowly raising the plot's emotional temperature and making his characters, caught in a creeping nightmare, feel both real and empathetic. This masterful outing should continue to earn Wendig comparisons to Stephen King.
