Dark Harvest - Hardcover

Partridge, Norman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1587671476 ISBN 13: 9781587671470

Publisher: Cemetery Dance Pubns, 2006

Synopsis

A Midwestern town. You know its name. You were born there.

It's Halloween night, 1963. Every boy between the ages of sixteen and nineteen has been locked up for the last five days. Now, starving and wild, they're hitting the streets armed with baseball bats, pitchforks, and two-by-fours studded with nails.

They're ready to go nose-to-nose with a legend. He's the reaper that grows in a cornfield, the merciless trick with a heart made of treats, the butchering nightmare with a Jack O' Lantern face. He's the October Boy, and he visits your town every Halloween, ready to run a gauntlet of young men anxious to carve his beating candy heart from his chest.

Mitch Crenshaw and his gang burn rubber in a street rod with Gorgon headlights.... Pete McCormick's on the move with a stolen .45... and a hunted girl is out there, too, making her break on the one night of the year when no rules apply. You're running with them, threading your own path through danger and moonlight, shadowing a sadistic cop and packs of brutal teenagers who'll attack anyone who gets in their way. Because this is your town. You understand its secrets, and you want a ringside seat on the night it all comes tumbling down.

Norman Partridge returns to Cemetery Dance with a high-octane tale of fantastic suspense. Startlingly original in style and execution, Dark Harvest is sure to be the horror event this Halloween season. Don't miss it!

About this title

About the Author:

A two-time Stoker Award-winner, NORMAN PARTRIDGE has published three short story collections, several comics, and five novels. Partridge lives in California.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Only six years have passed since this Bram Stoker Award–winning novel was published and already it has the aura of a classic. Though the story takes place in 1963, the lack of specifics makes it timeless, and from the opening words, Partridge’s dire campfire tale feels like it’s been around forever: “A Midwestern town. You know its name. You were born there.” Each Halloween, as is tradition in this Everytown, U.S.A., able-bodied teen boys are let loose into the night with crude weapons to chase down the October Boy (aka Ol’ Hacksaw Face or Sawtooth Jack), a “reaper that grows in the field, the merciless trick with a heart made of treats.” He’s a candy-stuffed scarecrow bodied with writhing vines and topped with a jack-o’-lantern head, and if he’s not killed before midnight, the town, in some indescribable way, will end. But this year the truth of the October Boy’s annual regenesis is uncovered by young Pete, whose blood-spattered night takes a turn different than any in the ritual’s storied history. Partridge drops us in the middle of a cornfield crackling with rural madness, and readers won’t pause to question silly things like logic or reason. Instead they will float along with the dreamy present-tense voice; succumb to the autumnal, sensory details (the October Boy smells like “scorched cinnamon, and gunpowder, and melted wax”); and root for Pete despite the feeling that nothing truly good can result from his success. Required reading for Halloween—unless you’d like to incur the wrath of Sawtooth Jack? --Daniel Kraus

About this edition

• Publisher: Cemetery Dance Pubns
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1587671476
• ISBN 13: 9781587671470
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 169