Peter Straub: ‘Ghost Story’ offers a haunted Christmas season

Dec 22

#1 New York Times bestselling author Peter Straub’s classic tale of horror, secrets, and the dangerous ghosts of the past...

What was the worst thing you’ve ever done?

In the sleepy town of Milburn, New York, about to be engulfed by a Christmas blizzard, four old men gather to tell each other stories—some true, some made-up, all of them frightening. A simple pastime to divert themselves from their quiet lives.

But one story is coming back to haunt them and their small town. A tale of something they did long ago. A wicked mistake. A horrifying accident. And they are about to learn that no one can bury the past forever...

Reviews

“The terror just mounts and mounts.”—Stephen King
“Straub inhabits his characters so fully, and gives us real time with them, it actually means something when the bodies start piling up right after Christmas.”—Keeping Winter (And Monsters) at Bay with the Power of Storytelling: Ghost Story by Peter Straub (Tor.com)
“Just as much as Stephen King’s bestselling horror novels of that day, Ghost Story, a critical and commercial success, ushered in the great era of ’80s horror. Few modern horror novels can compare with its ambitions.”—Ghost Story by Peter Straub (1979): Old Man Take a Look at Your Life (Too Much Horror Fiction)
“The best thing of its kind since Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.”—Newsweek
“Peter Straub 1943-2022 One of the best writers I’ve read, one of the best friends I’ve known.”—Neil Gaiman

Ghost Story
Peter Straub
Berkley
Categories: Ghost Suspense, Gothic & Horror, Suspense & Thriller, Literary Fiction

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About the Author

Peter Straub (1943-2022) wrote several novels, including Ghost Story, Koko, Mr. X, In the Night Room, and two collaborations with Stephen King, The Talisman and Black House. He wrote two volumes of poetry and two collections of short fiction, and he edited the Library of America’s edition of H. P. Lovecraft: Tales and the Library of America’s two-volume anthology, American Fantastic Tales. In all, Straub’s books and stories were nominated for a dozen World Fantasy Awards, winning four, and 14 Bram Stoker Awards, with ten wins, among many other award nominations. He was named a World Horror Grandmaster in 1997, was given the Horror Writers Association's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005, was named an International Horror Guild Living Legend in 2008, and received the World Fantasy Convention's Life Achievement Award in 2010. Straub was on the Locus Science Fiction Foundation board of directors for several decades. He passed away in 2022.

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Chris Well

Chris Well been a writer pretty much his entire life. (Well, since his childhood.) Over the years, he has worked in newspapers, magazines, radio, and books. He now is the chief of the website Monster Complex, celebrating monster stories in lit and pop culture. He also writes horror comedy fiction that embraces Universal Monsters, 1960s sitcoms, 1980s action movies, and the X-Files.

https://chriswell.substack.com/