Furnace
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
From the author of The Trickster, an unnerving tale of latterday alchemy and the horrors brooding beneath the placid surface of life in one small town in America.
Something is being born.
The darkness is its delight, deep and black and hot.
Its growth is unstoppable.
It knows who has summoned it.
It knows that its carrier is aware and afraid.
Its time is drawing near…
When long-distance truck driver Josh Spiller pulls into the small backwater town of Furnace, Virginia, he has a lot on his mind. He’s been driving for thirty-six hours straight after busting up with his pregnant girlfriend; he’s tired and hungry, and all he wants is to get some breakfast and rest up.
But Furnace has something special in store for Josh. Amongst the surprisingly affluent houses, the neat streets and smartly-dressed townsfolk lurks the stuff of living nightmare. A sequence of events is about to be unleashed that will test Josh to the edge of his endurance. A world of sorcery and malice is waiting to gather him in. For behind the prosperity of Furnace lie terrible secrets; and a terrifying fate in store for those who take an unwarranted interest.
Even now, as Josh searches for a place to stop, his electric-blue Peterbilt roaring through the gears, the eyes of the town are upon him.
The nightmare is beginning…
Reviews
‘Pacy, energetic, violent entertainment whose flashes of intuition and glittery neurosis give it an idosyncratic edge’
- Elizabeth Buchan, The Times
‘A deliciously creepy horror to rival premium Stephen King. Guaranteed to give you a terrifying dose of the heebee-jebees’
- Company
Praise for The Ancient:
‘Scary and unputdownable. If you’re going to read a single suspenser this year make it this one’ Stephen King
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gray gives meaning to the term "full-throttle horror" in her jet-propelled tale of an 18-wheeler's race with a demon. A likable trucker who believes that "the best cure for any kind of unhappiness was perpetual motion," Josh Spiller is fleeing commitment to his pregnant girlfriend when he accidentally runs down a child in rural Furnace, Va. Although cleared of responsibility, Josh can't shake the conviction that the child was deliberately pushed in front of his rig, and that the pious townsfolk are covering up a murder. Back on the road, Josh senses something indescribable pursuing him. It could just be his guilt, but a hitchhiker persuades him that a more sinister game is afoot. In a nod to M.R. James's classic "Casting the Runes," Josh discovers that he has been given a scrap inscribed with an invocation to a fire elemental, and that to save his life he must pass it "willingly but unknowingly" back to whoever gave it to him--within the next five days. The pace never flags once Josh burns rubber back to Furnace, even when the story detours through dead-end subplots about the fate of Josh's unborn child and Furnace's dark history of ritual sacrifice. Although the plot doesn't manage the same consistency that Gray brought to the many layers of her debut, Trickster, it abounds with unpredictable twists and ends with a suspenseful climax that both fulfills its eerie potential and does justice to its intelligently drawn characters. FYI: This is the second riff on M.R. James's story to appear this season. James Hynes's Publish and Perish pays homage to James with a novella called "Casting the Runes."
Customer Reviews
Furnace
Great book. Loved the twists.