Magic Terror - Softcover

Peter Straub

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007109911 ISBN 13: 9780007109913

Publisher: Harper Collins, 2002

Synopsis

A new collection of award-winning short stories from the acclaimed master of horror -- author of the bestselling MR X, KOKO, THE TALISMAN and BLACK HOUSE. Welcome to another kind of terror as Peter Straub leads us into the outer reaches of the psyche. Here the master of the macabre is at his absolute best in seven exquisite tales of living, dying and the terror that lies in between! No one tells a story like Peter Straub. He dazzles with the richness of his plots and the eloquence of his prose. He startles you into laughter in the face of events so dark that you begin to question your own moral compass. Then he reduces you to jelly by spinning a tale so terrifying -- and surprising -- that you have to sleep with the lights on. Now, with these seven acclaimed stories he has given us his finest and most imaginatively unsettling collection yet. 'WHEN STRAUB TURNS ON ALL HIS JETS, NO ONE IN THE SCREAM FACTORY CAN EQUAL HIM.' STEPHEN KING

About this title

Review:

Peter Straub is a fine sorcerer of horror whose bag of tricks includes stories of pure, unadulterated horror (Julia and Koko), as well as more subtle tales of psychological suspense (Mr. X and Shadowland). Now Straub conjures up Magic Terror, a collection of seven deeply disturbing tales that display his entire range.

"Bunny Is Good Bread" is without a doubt the most haunted tale of all, a harrowing account of a childhood from hell. The scary hero Fee was so traumatized as a 5-year-old by abuse from his father that he disconnects himself from the real world and lives as if in a film. Why? "If you forgot you were in a movie, your own feelings would tear you into bloody rags." Ever since the day Fee watches his mother die a horrible death, he's been tormented: "He was one-half dead himself; half of him belonged to his dead mother."

Fee is not the only character to be struck by a dark epiphany, a life-changing moment. In the lyrical "Porkpie Hat," a famous jazz musician recounts the ghoulish Halloween encounter that charted the course of his destiny, and in the twisted fairy tale "Ashputtle," a fantasy-inclined "princess" seeks retribution for a traumatic incident many years before.

In Straub's world, horror appears in different disguises--the dark mask of child abuse and the bloodied cloak of war ("The Ghost Village"). Regardless of how it shows itself, the effects will haunt long after lights out. --Naomi Gesinger

From the Back Cover:

“A POWERFUL GATHERING OF
SUSPENSE AND HORROR STORIES.”
–The Denver Post

“Compelling . . . Magic Terror is bliss for readers whose love of the eerie doesn’t preclude a taste for literary elegance. . . . [Straub] is one of the few fin-de-siècle writers whose stories can stand alongside works by 20th-century masters of the macabre such as King, Robert Aickman, Shirley Jackson, and Edith Wharton.”
–The Washington Post Book World

“There is no safety in this literate and much praised cluster of stories. It’s beautifully written stuff that breaks into the place where you live, breaching all psychologically installed security systems. . . . And although we desire to read it for many reasons, the truest one is that Peter Straub writes with compassion. He gets the link between modern horror and classic tragedy.”
–The Philadelphia Inquirer

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Collins
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0007109911
• ISBN 13: 9780007109913
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416