Fear

FOUR HOURS ARE MISSING FROM HIS LIFE. FINDING THEM COULD COST HIM HIS SANITY.

Professor James Lowry is a man of science and reason. An ethnologist and university professor, he dismisses spirits, witches and demons as superstition. Then, on an ordinary spring evening, his hat disappears—and with it, four hours of his life.

Where did he go? What did he do? And why can’t he remember?

As Lowry searches for the missing hours, the quiet university town of Atworthy begins to feel strangely wrong. Familiar people become unsettling. Shadows and voices intrude on the ordinary. And the harder he tries to reconstruct what happened, the less he can trust his memory, his perceptions—or his own mind.

Then comes the warning:

If you find your hat, you’ll find your four hours. If you find your four hours, then you will die....

Lowry has always trusted logic. Now someone—or something—seems to know his thoughts, turn the people closest to him against him and draw him deeper into a waking nightmare. To discover the truth, he must follow the clues into the very world he insisted could not exist.

Fear is a classic psychological horror thriller of paranoia, supernatural menace and unraveling reality. Its surreal, nightmare atmosphere creates dread without relying on gore, while the mystery of Lowry’s missing four hours keeps the truth just out of reach until the final revelation.

For readers who enjoy psychological thrillers, supernatural horror and mystery, and the unsettling, reality-bending atmosphere of The Twilight Zone, Fear takes you inside a mind where nothing—not memory, perception or reality itself—can be taken for granted.

“L. Ron Hubbard’s FEAR ... [is] long overdue for recognition as what it really is: a pioneering (1940) masterpiece of the modern psychological school of suspense and terror.” —Anthony Boucher, editor, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

Published in 1940, Fear marked L. Ron Hubbard’s enduring contribution to psychological horror. Its impact has continued through generations of horror and speculative fiction, with writers including Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury and Stephen King singling out Fear for praise and inspiration.

Also available as an abridged audiobook read by acclaimed actor Roddy McDowall, known for his distinctive work across film, television and voice performance.