Night of the Mannequins
A Tor.com Original
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3.5 • 68 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Award-winning author Stephen Graham Jones returns with Night of the Mannequins, a contemporary horror story where a teen prank goes very wrong and all hell breaks loose: is there a supernatural cause, a psychopath on the loose, or both?
We thought we'd play a fun prank on her, and now most of us are dead.
One last laugh for the summer as it winds down. One last prank just to scare a friend. Bringing a mannequin into a theater is just some harmless fun, right? Until it wakes up. Until it starts killing.
Luckily, Sawyer has a plan. He’ll be a hero. He'll save everyone to the best of his ability. He'll do whatever he needs to so he can save the day. That's the thing about heroes—sometimes you have to become a monster first.
"Suffused with questions about the nature of change and friendship, “Night of the Mannequins” is a fairy tale of impermanence showcasing Graham Jones’s signature style of smart, irreverent horror." —The New York Times
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jones (The Only Good Indians) tiptoes the border between supernatural and psychological horror in this weird and wild novella. Sawyer Grimes is one of five bored teens who decide to pose a discarded store mannequin as though it's a real patron in a movie theater in a suburb of Dallas, Tex. They all think it's a funny prank until Sawyer sees the mannequin walk out of the theater at the movie's end. When one of the friends is killed, along with her entire family, in a freak accident shortly thereafter, Sawyer becomes convinced that the mannequin's to blame. Believing "Manny" has morphed into a Frankenstein-style monster bent on offing its creators with no regard for who else gets hurt in the process, Sawyer decides that it's his responsibility to kill his fellow pranksters before Manny can get to them, and thus lessen the collateral damage for their families. Jones expertly expresses Sawyer's teenage attitudes and anxieties while skillfully tipping readers off to the chilling understanding that Sawyer is not the most reliable of narrators. Balancing horror and humor, this novella puts a clever modern twist on a classic monster story.
Customer Reviews
Scream + Weekend at Bernie’s + American Psycho
Scream + Weekend at Bernies + American Psycho
Here’s the part where I usually do my own synopsis. However, for maximum impact when you read, I want to avoid spoilers as much as I can for you. The first line of the book is “So, Shannah got a new job at the most vie theater, we thought we’d play a fun prank on her, and now most of us are dead, and I’m really starting to feel kind of guilty about it all.” That, coupled with the title, is all you need to know going in.
I don’t get why it’s fine for a movie to be a fun, mindless slasher film, and not a book. That’s the best way to describe this book. Towards the beginning I was getting a headache from trying to dive deep and figure out what the book was really about. After I just let go, it became so much more enjoyable (although I still can’t really say I understood)!
Buy this for yourself or anyone looking for something different. If you’re twisted, get it for someone who grew up watching the Canadian kids’ show, “Today’s Special.”
Fell flat
This was not what I was expecting. It was a bit outlandish and immature. It was not scary at all
It’s not about killer mannequins
And it is so good.