Description
'No one builds agonizing tension like Thomas Olde Heuvelt. Darker Days is his best yet.'
CATRIONA WARD
'This is Olde Heuvelt at the height of his powers.'
ALMA KATSU
Sometimes you think you can see things behind the fence. Bad things. So it's better not to look . . .
In Lock Haven, a quiet little town in Washington State, there is a very special street. Bird Street. The residents of Bird Street are all successful, wealthy, healthy and happy. And their children are all well-mannered and smart and high achievers.
At least they are for eleven months of the year. In November, however, the 'Darker Days' begin. For November's the month when things take a turn for the worse: accidents, bad luck, familial conflict and illness take hold. And it is in November that a stranger comes to Bird Street to collect the debt owed by the residents. Because, you see, there is a price that must be paid for all the happiness and good fortune they enjoy for the other eleven months of year. And that price is one human life. Every November. Without fail.
And so it has been for over a hundred years. To ease their guilt, the residents of Bird Street seek out individuals - usually the elderly or the terminally ill - who wish to die with dignity and are content to be helped on their way. Until one year, things don't go to plan and events take a terrifying turn . . .
This a neighbourhood drama to end all neighbourhood dramas. The residents of this particular cul de sac have made a pact with the Devil. For their gilded lives to continue, each year in November, someone must die in the woods . . .
About the Author
Thomas Olde Heuvelt is an international bestselling author from The Netherlands. His breakthrough novel Hex was published in over twenty-five countries and hailed as 'totally, brilliantly original' by Stephen King and as 'phenomenal, phenomenal' by film director Mike Flanagan. His follow-up novels Echo and Oracle have since seen global publication, the former boasts, according to the Guardian, 'possibly the most frightening prologue ever written', while the latter was judged by The New York Times to be his 'sharpest, most compelling work to date'.
Olde Heuvelt, whose last name in Dutch dialect means 'Old Hill', was the first translated author to win a Hugo Award (for his short fiction, in 2015). He lives in The Netherlands and the south of France with his partner, author and photographer David Samwel. Aside from being a writer, he is an avid guitar player and mountaineer.
Reviews
No one builds agonizing tension like Thomas Olde Heuvelt. Darker Days is his best yet - a terrible sacrificial offering that doesn't reveal its shocking nature until the very last page. -- CATRIONA WARD, author of The Last House on Needless Street
Thomas Olde Heuvelt is back with another wicked, fascinating, chilling tale, expertly balancing the supernatural with the horrors inherent in human nature. Darker Days reinforces that Olde Heuvelt is one of the most vital and exciting voices in modern horror. -- MIKE FLANAGAN, director of 'Dr. Sleep' and 'The Haunting of Hill House'
What price would you pay for a life of privilege? Darker Days is a new take on the Faustian bargain completely in keeping with our new age of greed and entitlement, with a twist at the end you won't see coming. This is Olde Heuvelt at the height of his powers. -- ALMA KATSU, author of The Hunger
There are days where I can't help but wonder if Thomas Olde Heuvelt made a deal with the devil. His writing is so completely captivating, his forged worlds so engrossing and expansive, there has to be some soul-selling afoot. Darker Days is his Dr. Faustus on the grandest of scales, which makes Olde Heuvelt our modern day Marlowe. -- CLAY McLEOD-CHAPMAN, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
'Darker Days begins on an uncomfortably grim and mysterious note. Olde Heuvelt increases the dread and tension over the course of this labyrinthine and distressing novel until the pressure is almost unbearable. There's a distinctly unpleasant current of inevitability coursing beneath every page of this genuinely distressing work-the inevitability of ritual, retribution, sacrifice, and death. This is a daring and uncompromising jewel of horror fiction. Reminiscent of the flawless work of Stephen King, Michael McDowell, and Robert R. McCammon, but still completely its own singular and disturbing vision.' -- ERIC LaROCCA, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
Darker Days is a novel of reckoning, calculating the balance between what you want and what it will cost, and a meditation on unthinkable bargains. An ingeniously constructed chronicle of fear from a master storyteller. -- A. G. SLATTER, author of The Crimson Road
Book Information
ISBN 9780857508188
Author Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Format Hardback
Page Count 416
Imprint Bantam Books (Transworld Publishers a division of the Random House Group)
Publisher Transworld Publishers Ltd
Weight(grams) 750g
Dimensions(mm) 240mm * 156mm * 40mm
