Nazareth Hill (Mass Market Paperback)

Now i should warn most of the horror fan's like myself out there that this really is not a typical haunted house story. When some of the events that take place in the book happen they will downright bother you, i sure know they bothered me a great deal. This is not for the faint of heart and the way this book ends will not please a great many people.

I recommend this book to any horror fan out there simply because you probably won't read anything similar out there with the exception of King's The Shining, but even saying that King's novel doesn't hold a candle to the outright brutality that takes place here. Enjoy....

Up on Nazareth Hill, there squats what young Amy calls "the spider house". She's about eight years old when her father Oswald holds her up to the windows to show there's nothing to fear. He accidently drops her through the portal and something strange is waiting to reach out and grab for her...

Years later, after a terrifying dream had predicted it, Amy's mom is gone and her father has decided he and Amy should take up residence in the spider house, along with several other tenants.

What follows is an almost perfect haunted house tale. Or if you like witches too, come here. Or stay away, whichever seems more appropriate. No one in the house seems safe--not the photographer in his dark-room-in-residence who develops a photo with a chilling image captured just as the dark-room door creaks open, and not the woman tied to a bed as part of a couple's sex games who finds herself quite vulnerable to...an intruder...for just the brief moment her husband has left the room--but it is Oswald and Amy who face the most dreadful living nightmare the house has to offer.

The more Amy struggles to ascertain from neglected or arcane sources why the house might hold malevolent lurkers, or have walls that may, for an instant, turn from wallpapered wood to ancient stone, the more it seems she will be blocked from real discovery. Meanwhile, her father becomes more and more concerned about her rebellious nature, until it's clear he and Amy will be in for some major confrontations. Too bad the house has got its hooks into both of them.

The book is insidious in its subtlety, at first; the house's dark influence snakes its way through each chapter, almost without the reader (this reader, anyway) realizing there is a sharp-toothed supernatural trap about to spring shut--one that will punish the innocent for the crimes of the past.

A brilliant look at teenage rebellion forced to stand up to staggering supernatural evil. Amy's character--her agonizing struggle to withstand cruelty from a source she could never expect--quietly makes her an important figure in modern horror.

Loved it.