The Keeper - by Sarah Langan (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The dreams of a dying rural town are haunted by the town pariah--and soon become waking nightmares--in this novel from the Bram Stoker Award-winning author.

The formerly prosperous paper mill town of Bedford, Maine, has fallen on hard times. With the mill closed, nobody's making ends meet. What's worse, lately the people are dreaming about Susan Marley, a young woman fallen from grace whom they pity and fear.

No one talks about the dreams even though they all share them. It's a delicate balance. An unspoken devil's pact. But when Susan mysteriously dies during a weeklong rainstorm, those nightmares start to come true. Only the guilt-riddled people who once loved Susan can guess at what's happening, or act to stop it.

"Langan combines a genuinely poetic sensibility with a taste for horror's most bravura excesses, which gives her book a distinct and juicy flavor all its own." --Peter Straub, New York Times-bestselling author

"In vivid, compelling prose, which runs from the wry to the lyrical, Langan here gives us nothing less than a sharply realized portrait of an American town in the death-throes of decay. Susan Marley is a subtle juggernaut of a character--and she inhabits the mind once you've finished like a dark, lingering smoke." --Jack Ketchum, author of The Girl Next Door

Review Quotes

"The Keeper is a brilliant debut, heralding the arrival of a major talent." --Tim Lebbon, author of The Silence

"The Keeper's a smart, brand-new take on the haunted house story." --Jack Ketchum

"A dark and bracingly bleak tale of supernatural terror. Its brooding atmosphere comes as much from the social and psychological as from the ghostly, and best of all, from the quality of the prose." --Ramsey Campbell, World Fantasy Award-winning author

"Deft and disturbing, The Keeper twists expectations into surreal surprises. Sarah Langan's tale of haunted lives and landscapes is hypnotic reading--an assured and impressive debut." --Douglas Winter, Bram Stoker Award-winning author and editor

"Sarah Langan's debut novel The Keeper kept me up, late into the night. Do I bear her a grudge? Of course not! I'm hoping for a whole shelf of novels by Langan, and many other sleepless nights." --Kelly Link, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Magic for Beginners

"An astonishing first novel . . . chilling, haunting, and so smartly written that the pages fly by like the wind." --Ray Garton, World Horror Grandmaster

About the Author

Sarah Langan is a three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author. Her works have appeared on best of the year lists at NPR, Newsweek, The Irish Times, and Publishers Weekly. Langan's short stories have been published in Nightmare and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and featured in anthologies The Best Horror of the Year, The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy. She has an MFA from Columbia University and an MS in Environmental Health Science/Toxicology from NYU. Langan lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughters.