In this gripping and terrifying horror story from the bestselling author of The Homecoming, the President's late son haunts the White House wreaking havoc on the family—and America. The year is 1853. President-elect Franklin Pierce is traveling with his family to Washington, DC, when tragedy strikes. In an instant, their train runs off the rails, violently flinging passengers about the cabin. But when this great iron machine finally comes to rest, the only casualty is the President-elect's beloved son, Bennie, which casts Franklin's presidency in a pall of sorrow and grief. As Franklin moves into the White House, he begins to notice that something bizarre is happening. Strange sounds coming from the walls and ceiling, creepy voices that seem to echo out of time itself, and visions of spirits crushed under the weight of American history. But when First Lady Jane Pierce brings in the most noted Spiritualists of the day, the Fox sisters, for a...

ALREADY OPTIONED FOR FILM BY LEGENDARY PICTURES (Inception, the Dark Knight movies, Interstellar) From the #1 internationally bestselling author of The Demonologist, called “smart, thrilling, utterly unnerving” by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, comes a spine-tingling supernatural thriller about a survivor of a near-death experience haunted by his beautiful, vindictive twin sister.Most people who have a near-death experience come back alone… After he survived a fire that claimed the life of his twin sister, Ashleigh, Danny Orchard wrote a bestselling memoir about going to Heaven and back. But despite the resulting fame and fortune, he’s never been able to enjoy his second chance at life. Ash won’t let him. In life, Danny’s charming and magnetic twin had been a budding psychopath who privately terrorized her family—and death hasn’t changed her wicked ways. Ash has haunted...

Bestselling author Andrew Pyper returns with a riveting psychological thriller about how the people you've known your whole life can suddenly become strangers.What if everything you knew about the people you loved was a lie? After the death of their absentee father, Aaron and Bridge Quinlan travel to a vast rainforest property in the Pacific Northwest to hear the reading of his will. There, they meet up with their mother and troubled sister, Franny, and are shocked to discover the will's terms: in order to claim their inheritance they must all remain at the estate for thirty days without any contact with the outside world. Despite their concerns, they agree. The Quinlans soon come to learn their family has more secrets than they ever imagined—revelations that at first inspire curiosity, then fear. Why does Bridge have faint memories of the estate? Why did their father want them to be sequestered there together? And what is out there they...

Bartholomew Christian Crane is a criminal defence lawyer who wins. Thirty-three, silver-tongued and driven by a moral code that preaches, "There are no such things as lies, only misperceptions," Barth is ripe for the first murder trial of his career. Two fourteen-year-old girls have gone missing and presumably lie on the bottom of a lake just outside an economically depressed northern town. Though everyone believes the girls' English teacher is guilty, no bodies have yet been discovered and there is little other substantial evidence. As Barth begins work on a trial that quickly slides into a nightmarish blur between dream and reality, he feels an uneasy connection to the victims— and to the ghost that haunts the lake's waters. Lost Girls is an audacious, darkly comic literary thriller that catches the reader off guard at every turn, a single mystery that fractures into many, a story of ghosts both real and imagined.

From acclaimed, bestselling author Andrew Pyper, a suspenseful page-turner that explores the repercussions of that most dishonest of thefts: stealing another’s story and calling it your own.Patrick Rush, a former bright light at the National Star now demoted to the reality TV beat, is still recovering from his wife’s death when he joins a writers’ group in Toronto. His goal: to write the book he’s always felt lived within him. Trouble is, Patrick has no story to tell. And while the circle’s members show similarly little literary promise, there is one exception: Angela. Her unsettling readings tell of a shadowy childhood tragedy and an unremitting fear of the Sandman, a “terrible man who does terrible things.” It’s the stuff of nightmares or horror films. Or is it? Over the weeks that follow, a string of unsolved murders seem increasingly connected to Patrick. And then the circle’s members start to go missing, one by one. Still haunted by loss–and by a crime only those in the circle could know of–Patrick finds himself in a fictional world made horrifically real. But nothing will put him in greater danger than that ancient curse of natural born readers: the need to know how the story ends.At once a complex and compulsive read, The Killing Circle explores the side effects of an increasingly fame-mad culture, where even the staid realm of literature can fall prey to ravenous ambition and competition.From the Hardcover edition.From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. In this extraordinary thriller from Canadian author Pyper (The Wildfire Season), Patrick Rush, a lowly TV critic for a Toronto newspaper whose life has been slowly deteriorating since the untimely death of his wife, struggles to remain employed while trying to raise his precocious young son. When Rush decides to join a local writing circle in hopes of pursuing his lifelong dream of being an author, he becomes obsessed with a horrific work-in-progress written by a would-be writer in the group, a possibly autobiographical tale about being haunted by a terrible man who does terrible things. Rush begins finding connections among the story's supernatural villain, a shadowy serial killer with a predilection for dismemberment that has all of Toronto living in fear, and his own unraveling sanity. Powered by an ingeniously nonlinear narrative and suffused with a tone thick with dread, this is easily Pyper's most ambitious—and absorbing—work to date. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistPatrick Rush is a lonely widower, a wannabe novelist, and the father of a young son. He joins a writer’s workshop or, as its leader refers to it, a “circle.” The leader is a minor novelist from the seventies who disappeared from the Toronto literary scene after some scathing reviews and allegations of criminal sexual behavior. During the circle’s weekly meetings, Patrick is mesmerized by the writing of a young girl whose unadorned yet ethereal prose reveals an intensely personal childhood story of abandonment, abuse, and stalking by the Sandman, a character who may be real, may be symbolic, and may have followed her to Toronto. Bodies are turning up in Patrick’s neighborhood, and Patrick’s concern for the safety of his son grows, even as the readings in the circle—and the behavior of its leader—become more ominous. Pyper’s first novel, Lost Girls (2000), was a New York Times Notable Book. Few are better at conveying an omnipresent sense of dread and horror bubbling just beneath life’s seemingly mundane routines. This will keep you up one night reading and another four checking the locks on the doors. --Wes Lukowsky

Haunted. Scarred. Alone.And the nightmare's just beginning...The Wildfire Season is a remarkable tour de force – an edgy psychological thriller, a supernatural chiller, a terrifying tale of untamed nature and a poignant love story.The vast tracts of wilderness of the Canadian north are beautiful but dangerous – a place to lose yourself, or hide your secrets. For fire-fighter Miles McEwan, scarred and haunted by a terrible death, it is both.But the uneasy peace of his new life in the backwoods town of Ross River can't last. Violence is simmering in the vast forests around him and the past he thought he had escaped is about to catch up with him.Now Miles must fight the fires that rage around him as well the ones he had hoped to leave behind. All the time knowing that one of his friends must be a killer...

A stolen child. An ancient evil. A father’s descent. And the literary masterpiece that holds the key to his daughter’s salvation. Professor David Ullman is among the world’s leading authorities on demonic literature, with special expertise in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Not that David is a believer—he sees what he teaches as a branch of the imagination and nothing more. So when the mysterious Thin Woman arrives at his office and invites him to travel to Venice and witness a “phenomenon,” he turns her down. She leaves plane tickets and an address on his desk, advising David that her employer is not often disappointed. That evening, David’s wife announces she is leaving him. With his life suddenly in shambles, he impulsively whisks his beloved twelve-year-old daughter, Tess, off to Venice after all. The girl has recently been stricken by the same melancholy moods David knows so well, and he hopes to cheer her up and distract them both from the troubles at home. But what happens in Venice will change everything. First, in a tiny attic room at the address provided by the Thin Woman, David sees a man restrained in a chair, muttering, clearly insane . . . but could he truly be possessed? Then the man speaks clearly, in the voice of David’s dead father, repeating the last words he ever spoke to his son. Words that have left scars—and a mystery—behind. When David rushes back to the hotel, he discovers Tess perched on the roof’s edge, high above the waters of the Grand Canal. Before she falls, she manages to utter a final plea: Find me. What follows is an unimaginable journey for David Ullman from skeptic to true believer. In a terrifying quest guided by symbols and riddles from the pages of Paradise Lost, David must track the demon that has captured his daughter and discover its name. If he fails, he will lose Tess forever.Amazon.com ReviewAn Amazon Best Book of the Month, March 2013: This supernatural thriller rises above its by-the-numbers plot to deliver a mix of creepy mood and engaging musings on good and evil. It’s still a light read despite author Andrew Pyper’s literary pretensions. The movie rights have been optioned, and the staging of some of the narrative seemed based more for big-screen bang than because it made sense. The story is told by David Ullman, a renowned Miltonian scholar whose knowledge of Paradise Lost draws him into a mystery in Venice that ultimately puts him in peril. Ullman has to fight both his internal demons and possibly some very real ones to save himself, his daughter, and maybe the whole world. Original? No. But The Demonologist still provides a bit of page-turning fun with some truly scary moments that had me shivering during a late-night read. --Aaron KnopfReview“Smart, thrilling, and utterly unnerving. Pyper’s gift is that he deeply respects his readers, yet still insists on reducing them to quivering children. I like that in a writer.” (Gillian Flynn #1 New York Times bestselling author of *Gone Girl* )“A mesmerizing and melancholy narrative voice lends chilling credibility to this exceptional supernatural thriller.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review) )"Pyper crafts compulsively readable and finely written thrillers. . . . This book is going to be the 'Gangnam Style' of 2013." (The National Post (Canada) )“Pyper is an intelligent writer, steeped in Miltonian symbolism, gifted with language . . . This artful literary exploration of evil’s manifestation makes for a sophisticated horror tale.” (*Kirkus Reviews* )"The evil of Milton's pandemonium comes to life . . . Pyper's novel takes on "things that go bump in the brain" and delivers a stirring entry in the supernatural thriller genre." (*Booklist* )“Plenty of books claim to be scary, but this is genuinely terrifying, don’t-read-late-at-night stuff. Thrilling, compelling and beautifully written, The Demonologist makes Rosemary's Baby feel like a walk in the park.” (S.J. Watson New York Times bestselling author of *Before I Go To Sleep* )“Richly crafted, deliriously scary and compulsively page-turning from beginning to end. Imagine The Exorcist and The Da Vinci Code as penned by Daphne du Maurier. Don't miss this one!” (Jeffery Deaver New York Times bestselling author of *XO* )“Smart and astonishing, Andrew Pyper has created a recurring nightmare for adults. The Demonologist holds a mirror to the reader and reveals the places where our deepest darkness lurks. Like Milton’s Paradise Lost, this is the story of the human condition, the fall, and the way back. I slept with the light on for nights, too obsessed to stop reading and too terrified to dream.” (Brunonia Barry New York Times bestselling author of The Lace Reader and *The Map of True Places* )“The Demonologist is that rare thing—a novel that is both genuinely terrifying and erudite. The research is excellent and lightly worn, the pace and cleverness of the plot thrilling. One of the most exciting works of fiction I’ve read for some time.” (Kate Mosse New York Times bestselling author of Labyrinth, Sepulchre and *Citadel* )“As compelling and smoothly chilling a tale as you’ll find this year. The Demonologist shows an enormously gifted writer at the top of his game, producing a novel of eerie menace and unique depth. Those of us who write supernatural stories do not throw the names Ira Levin, William Peter Blatty, and Peter Straub around lightly. You’ll be hearing all three associated with Mr. Pyper soon, and all such comparisons are warranted, the highest praise I can offer.” (Michael Koryta New York Times bestselling author of *The Prophet* )

The #1 internationally bestselling author of The Demonologist radically reimagines the origins of gothic literature's founding masterpieces—Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Dracula—in a contemporary novel driven by relentless suspense and surprising emotion. This is the story of a man who may be the world's one real-life monster, and the only woman who has a chance of finding him.As a forensic psychiatrist at New York's leading institution of its kind, Dr. Lily Dominick has evaluated the mental states of some of the country's most dangerous psychotics. But the strangely compelling client she interviewed today—a man with no name, accused of the most twisted crime—struck her as somehow different from the others, despite the two impossible claims he made. First, that he is more than two hundred years old and personally inspired Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Bram Stoker in...