Meriwether, Lee

Black Lightning

"HIS MOST EFFECTIVE THRILLER TO DATE. . . [A] COMPELLING READ."
--The Seattle Times

For five years Seattle journalist Anne Jeffers has pursued the horrifying story of a sadistic serial killer's bloody reign, capture, trial, and appeal--crusading to keep the wheels of justice churning toward the electric chair. Now the day of execution has come. A convicted killer will meet his end. Anne believes her long nightmare is over. But she's dead wrong. . . .

"ELECTRIFYINGLY SCARY."
--San Jose Mercury News

Within days, a similar murder stuns the city. As the butcher stalks his next victims, creeping ever closer to her, Anne is seized by an icy unease, a haunting sense of connection to these unspeakable crimes. And, relentlessly, she hears the eerie echo of the dead man's last words to her: "Today won't end it. How will you feel, Anne? When I'm dead, and it all starts again, how will you feel?"

"ONE OF SAUL'S BEST."
--Publishers Weekly

A SELECTION OF THE LITERARY GUILD(c) AND DOUBLEDAY BOOK CLUB(c)


From the Paperback edition.

Guardian

"All the right scares in all the right places." The Seattle Times
A telephone rings in the dead of night with shocking news for single mother MaryAnne Carpenter: her friends the Wilkensons are suddenly, inexplicably dead, their only child, Joey, a sad and silent adolescent and MaryAnne's godchild, abruptly orphaned. But as MaryAnne rushes with her family to the Wilkenson's ranch to embrace her young charge, disturbing questions mount. Was it an accident that killed her friends? Or murder?
Now, as winter transforms the ranch into a place of blinding, dangerous storms, a series of horrific murders, killings that suggest a raging animal and defy solution by the local police, draw ever closer to MaryAnne and her young family.

The Manhattan Hunt Club

In Manhattan Hunt Club John Saul plumbs the depths of the Manhattan underground--the network of subway tunnels and secret caverns and chambers where the homeless denizens of the city have created their own society. It's a world Jeff Converse, a young college student convicted of a crime he didn't commit, never knew existed until he is plunged into it after an "accident" that occurs while he is being transported to prison. He soon realizes that it's no accident, but the opening move in a deadly game being played by some of the city's most powerful men and women, a game in which he is the prey and they are the hunters. Jeff's only chance to make it to the surface and survive lies in allying himself with a homicidal maniac who's appointed himself the young man's protector, but whose designs on Jeff are almost as lethal as those of his enemies in the Manhattan Hunt Club.

Saul made his reputation in the horror genre, but he now focuses on psychological terrors rather than things that go bump in the night. His narrative gifts are displayed to great advantage in this heart-stopping thriller; the pacing is flawless and the central characters are very well developed. What keeps this from living up to its fullest potential is the inadequate motivation of the villains, who are largely one-dimensional cardboard cutouts. But that won't keep this otherwise topnotch thriller off the bestseller lists, where Saul (Nightshade, The Right Hand of Evil), like Stephen King, is a perennial contender for the number one spot. --Jane Adams

Performed by Lee Meriwether
Four cassettes, 6 hours


When twenty-one year old NYU student Jeff Converse is convicted of a brutal rape and murder that he did not commit, his nightmare has just begun. Instead of being taken to prison, he is abducted and left in the dark network of tunnels that exist beneath Manhattan. Jeff is at the mercy of the secret society that controls this underground hell-the Manhattan Hunt Club, an exclusive club near Wall Street whose membership includes many of the city's political and financial elite.


Bored with conventional sport, these members now pursue a much more challenging species of game. With a vicious killer as his only ally, Jeff quickly learns the simple rules to the game he has unwittingly begun to play: he will be turned loose in the tunnels and then hunted. If he reaches the surface, he is free. But if he's found, he faces a grisly death.



With this chilling descent into new depths of darkness, John Saul soars to new heights of suspenseful storytelling.

The acknowledged master of psychological suspense and heart-stopping terror, New York Times bestselling author John Saul now invites you to descend to chilling new depths of darkness -- and discover a secret, savage world that exists beneath our very feet.

The promising future of New York City college student Jeff Converse has suddenly been shattered by a nightmarish turn of events. Falsely convicted of a brutal crime, Jeff sees his life vanishing before his eyes. But someone has other plans for Jeff, in a far deadlier place than any penitentiary. He finds himself beneath the teeming streets of Manhattan, in a hidden landscape of twisting tunnels and forgotten subterranean chambers. Here, an invisible population of the homeless, the desperate, and the mad has carved out its own shadow society.

But they are not alone. The pitch-dark tunnels and abandoned subway stations are haunted by the unmistakable sounds of predators in search of game. Someone has made this forsaken civilization beneath the city a private killing ground... and the hunt is on.

Trapped in a treacherous underground maze, cut off at every turn by ragged gangs of sinister "gamekeepers," and stalked relentlessly by unseen hunters, Jeff faces overwhelming odds in the race to reach salvation and elude capture. With no weapon but his wits, and an unimaginable threat lurking around every dark corner, Jeff must somehow move heaven and earth to escape from a living hell.

The Manhattan Hunt Club is the most thrilling and suspenseful novel yet from the ingenious mind of John Saul.

"Heart-of-darkness storyteller Saul weaves a creepy tale of murder, corruption, and evil... It's a hot tome for summer in the city."
   PEOPLE

"Long after you've finished this suspenseful cliffhanger of a book, the underground world that Saul creates will linger in the mind.... Saul takes us deep into that dark night of the soul and the subways in his frighteningly realistic and scarifying tale."
   THE PROVIDENCE SUNDAY JOURNAL

Nightshade

There's no such thing as a happy family in John Saul's dark imagination. He made this chillingly clear in Suffer the Children and The Right Hand of Evil, and he deepens this impression in Nightshade, a perfectly macabre tale of a household ripped apart by malevolent forces.

Meet New Hampshire couple Bill and Joan Hapgood and their teenage son, Matt. They have a huge home, many friends, and the glow of Matt's glory as a high school football star. Life couldn't be sweeter, right? Wrong!

Trouble begins when Joan's mother, Emily, accidentally burns down her own house and moves in with the Hapgoods. Matt is terrified of his foul-tempered grandmother, who refers to him as "Joan's bastard." Emily's odd behavior reaches a fever pitch when she insists that the bedroom of her long-dead (and much-favored) elder daughter, Cynthia, be recreated, prom dress, dolls, and all. The household's normal warmth vanishes, "the sense of welcome and comfort was gone." Matt complains of strange, perverted dreams in which the staggeringly beautiful Cynthia visits him, leaving behind the pungent scent of her Nightshade perfume. Joan also feels the presence of her dead sister, and has painful flashbacks to a childhood best left forgotten. A murder and three disappearances befall the small town, Matt spirals into depression, and Joan loses her mind. Throw in child abuse, torture, and a wickedly irritable ghost, and we have one whopper of a nightmare. Nightshade contains gobs of gore, melodramatic (and occasionally bumbling) prose, and a deviant, twisted ending--John Saul's famous recipe for family disaster and reader delight. --Naomi Gesinger

Three cassettes, 5 hours 15 minutes

Life is nearly perfect for 15 year-old Matt Moore who lives with his mom, Joan, and supportive stepdad, Bill Hapgood, in rural New Hampshire-until his maternal grandmother, Emily Moore moves into their house.  Emily is difficult to start with, she's deteriorating rapidly with Alzheimer's disease.  But, it is Emily's odd request that the Hapgoods recreate the room of her elder, deceased daughter, Cynthia, that strains the family.  Cynthia's pictures and possessions and even her perfume, come to dominate the lives of Matt and the Hapgoods.

As the family's world begins to deteriorate, Bill Hapgood is killed hunting.  The circumstances around Bill's death seem to implicate Matt as his killer.  It's Emily's accusation of Matt that finally sends the remaining family members into a hellish nightmare they could never have imagined, and from which they can only hope to survive.

The master of terror and psychological suspense, John Saul taps into our darkest, most deeply guarded fears in his most gripping novel yet, the terrifying story of an innocent teenager who must confront the cursed sins of the past -- and an evil so corrupting that it threatens to consume his entire world ....

Nightmares become reality... and from the fire emerges a malevolent presence.

Fifteen-year-old Matt Moore has a loving mother and a caring stepfather, a host of friends, and a growing relationship with the most beautiful girl at school. All signs point to a bright future, until fate intervenes. A sudden fire leaves Matt's senile and troubled grandmother homeless. When she moves in with the family, her ceaseless demands cause unrelieved tension -- and with her comes a shameful secret between her daughters that traps young Matt between a dead aunt who haunts him and his own mother, who seeks redemption for her sister's sins -- and her own.

A horrific shadow from the past... and a shocking tragedy in the present.

To save himself and those he loves, Matt must eventually face the forces of evil and destruction -- alone.

Right Hand of Evil: A Novel

John Saul has been giving readers the jitters since the publication of Suffer the Children in 1977. His 22nd twisted tale, The Right Hand of Evil is another nerve shaker.

The Conway family is in deep financial trouble. Ted Conway would rather knock back bourbon than support his family, and Janet Conway's career as an artist is going nowhere. Happily, the three Conway children--toddler Molly and 15-year-old twins Jared and Kimberley--seem well adjusted. Of course happy children to not make for good horror material, so dark times are just around the corner.

Ted receives an unexpected call from a Louisiana sanatorium, where his aged Aunt Cora is dying. Cora wants to convey a final message to her only surviving family members. She rasps out the ominous words, "I can see it. Stay away! Stay away from here!" Her words are futile--the financially strapped Ted moves his family into Cora's old house, a house deeded to them in a family trust.

Young Kimberley instantly feels a dark presence in the dilapidated Victorian house: "Suddenly her skin was crawling, as if a large insect were creeping across her neck." Tragedy upon tragedy strikes the family. Kim's beloved cat disappears and is sacrificed in a black-magic ceremony; an evil presence takes over Jared's mind--transforming him into the most rotten of bad seeds; the wails of a dead infant fill Kim's head, driving her to the edge of insanity. The family has fallen victim to a centuries-old curse--a curse that threatens to wipe out the Conway name.

Although there is nothing particularly original or earth shattering about this haunted-house story, The Right Hand of Evil is still a welcome piece of escapism. Read it at your peril. --Naomi Gesinger

When the Conways move into their ancestral home in Louisiana after the death of an estranged aunt, it is with the promise of a new beginning. But the house has a life of its own. Abandoned for the last forty years, surrounded by thick trees and a stifling sense of melancholy, the sprawling Victorian house seems to swallow up the sunlight. Deep within the cold cellar and etched into the very walls is a long, dark history of the Conway name--a grim bloodline poisoned by suicide, strange disappearances, voodoo rituals, and rumors of murder. But the family knows nothing of the soul-shattering secrets that snake through generations of their past. They do not know that terror awaits them. For with each generation of the Conways comes a hellish day of reckoning. . . .

When the Conways move into their ancestral home in Louisiana after the death of an estranged aunt, it is with the promise of a new beginning. But the house has a life of its own. Deep within the cold cellar and etched into the very walls is a long, dark history of the Conway name -- a grim bloodline poisoned by suicide, strange disappearances, voodoo rituals, and rumors of murder. But the family knows nothing of the soul-shattering secrets that snake through generations of their past. They do not know that terror awaits them. For with each generation of the Conways comes a hellish day of reckoning.

Shadows

They call it the Academy. A secluded, cliff-top mansion overlooking the rugged Pacific coast. A school for children gifted -- or cursed -- with extraordinary minds. Children soon to come under the influence of an intelligence even more brilliant than their own -- and unspeakably evil. For within this mind a dark plan is taking form. A plan so horrifying, no one will believe it. No one but the children. And for them it is already too late. Too late, unless one young student can resist the seductive invitation that will lead... into the Shadows.


From the Paperback edition.