Something In The Shadows

Joseph Meaker was a shy, dedicated scholar. To his brash wife, Maggie, and her advertising friends, he was a cipher, easily dismissed. But behind his gentle façade he carried the seeds of violence, subtle and understated. Until the day his pet cat was accidentally killed by a neighbor’s car.

Joseph’s desire for revenge became an obsession that could only be satisfied by a ''punishment'' so gruesome it makes the skin crawl.

Vin Packer is the pen name for Marijane Meaker (born May 27, 1927), an American novelist and short story writer in several genres. From 1952 to 1969, she wrote twenty mystery and crime novels as Vin Packer, including Spring Fire, which is credited with launching the genre of lesbian pulp. Using her own observations of lesbians in the 1950s and 1960s, she wrote a series of nonfiction books as Ann Aldrich from 1955 to 1972. In 1972, she switched genres and pen names once more to begin writing for young adults, and became quite successful as M.E. Kerr, producing over twenty novels and winning multiple awards, including the American Library Association’s lifetime award for young-adult literature (Edwards Award). She was described by The New York Times Book Review as “one of the grand masters of young adult fiction.” As Mary James, she has written four books for younger children.