Books

Off Season 35th Anniversary Edition

The 35th Anniversary edition of Off Season includes the author’s originally intended version of the novel (unexpurgated), a new short story based in the Off Season universe, a new afterword from the author, the novelette, Winter Child, five full-page interior illustrations by Tomislav Tikulin and stunning full color wraparound dust jacket artwork by David Stoupakis.

 

Contents

  • Off Season: The Unexpurgated Edition
  • Afterword: from Off Season: The Unexpurgated Edition
  • By Way of an Introduction (A preamble to Winter Child)
  • Winter Child
  • End Game (An original tie-in short story, and perhaps the last of Dead River)
  • Life Among the Cannibals (Reflecting on 35 Years of the Dead River Series)

Off Season ARC

A beautiful New York editor retreats to a quiet Maine beach town – 

 

Nearby, a savage human family lurks in the woods, watching, waiting…

 

And before too many hours pass, five civilized, sophisticated people will learn just how primitive we all are, and that there are no limits to the will to survive.

Off Season

A beautiful New York editor retreats to a quiet Maine beach town – 

 

Nearby, a savage human family lurks in the woods, watching, waiting…

 

And before too many hours pass, five civilized, sophisticated people will learn just how primitive we all are, and that there are no limits to the will to survive.

Hide and Seek

They were young. They were looking for kicks. They decided to play an innocent game in a strange old house.

 

First it turned ugly. Then it turned brutal. Finally it became a nightmare of horror and violence.

 

None of them was ever the same again.

She Wakes

She Wakes

…And feeds on the living, who are so easy – so pleasurable – to kill.

 

She Wakes

…And her unearthly awakening summons Jordan Chase, a man who hears the voices of ancient gods and feels the power of sacred places – who knows he must fulfill a destiny which may ensure his death.

 

She Wakes

…And seeks out Robert Dodgson, a writer who came to Greece for sun, ouzo and women- luring him and his friends into a nightmare of unimaginable pain and terror.

 

She Wakes

…To seduce and destroy, to drench the world in blood. And nothing human can stop her.

Cover

In the silence of a green wilderness, they were to learn terror…

 

The celebrated novelist. The model. The agent. The playwright. The photographer. The wife. Refugees from modern civilization off for a weekend in the woods. Far away from the clash and clamor of the city…and amenities like telephones, hospitals, and policemen. Soon, they’ll stand naked against a battle-scarred soldier whose cunning and ferocity rival any force of nature, a survivor of our most frustrating war still fighting the enemy in every person he sees. Soon, during the long days and deadly nights, all the trappings and trivia of their lives will be stripped away…until all that’s left is a desperate, elemental need to survive and fight together – if they can – to defeat the killing machine that threatens them all.

The Girl Next Door

The Suburbs.

 

A contented time in a quiet place for most. 

 

But not for all.

 

For on a tranquil, tree-lined street, in a dark basement, fourteen-year-old Meg and her little sister Susan are about to learn everything there is to know about the savagery in the human heart.

 

And an entire neighborhood, young and old alike, will either turn away from the madness, or succumb to it, joining in the slow, sadistic torture of a victim too beautiful and too innocent for her own good. Here, only one young boy will dare to reach out to make an agonizing choice between love and compassion – and violence and evil.

Offspring

The story behind the gruesome legend…

 

It shocked horror fans everywhere – Jack Ketchum’s Off Season, the brutal and harrowing story of an inbred family of cannibals in present-day Maine. Some reader were horrified, others outraged. Yet no one could put the book down. An instant cult classic.

 

Now the legend lives on.

 

A new generation of terror.

 

The local sheriff of Dead River, Maine, thought he’d killed them off ten years ago – a primitive, cave-dwelling tribe of predatory savages. But somehow, the clan survived. To breed. To hunt. To kill and eat. Now the peaceful residents who came to Dead River to escape civilization, are fighting for their lives. And there’s only one way to do it:

 

Unleash the primal savagery lurking in their own hearts.

Joyride

Howard Gardner deserved to die. For years he abused his wife. Physically. Verbally. Psychologically. Even after the separation, he kept coming back for more.

 

Carole and her lover, Lee, knew there was only one way to get him out of their lives. Murder. They planned every detail. And they thought they committed the perfect crime.

 

But a stranger saw them do it. His name was Wayne Lock, and he wanted to be their friend. He wanted to share the thrill of murder. And he wanted to take Carole and Lee on a road trip straight to hell. An all-out killing spree. The ultimate experience…

Stranglehold

Lydia Danse is a devoted wife, with a wonderful son to raise and nurture. But now her family is being torn apart by a vicious man submerged in his own insanity: her husband. She will do anything to get her son away from him. But Arthur Danse is not a man who surrenders his possessions. He holds on tight to what is his. And he never lets go…

Red (UK)

The old man hears them before he sees them, the three boys coming over the hill, disturbing the peace by the river where he’s fishing. He smells the gun oil, too much oil on a brand-new shotgun. These aren’t hunters, they’re rich kids who don’t care about the river and the fish and the old man. Or his dog.

 

Red is the name of the old man’s dog, his best friend in the world And when the boys shoot the dog – for nothing, for simple spite – he sees red, like a mist before his eyes.

 

And before the whole hing is done there’ll be more red. Red for blood…

 

Note: paperback edition also contains a sample from Road Kill (aka Joyride)

Ladies’ Night

Ladies’ Night is a non-stop rollercoaster ride of sheer nerve-rattling terror, deemed too violent for mass-market publication. In this modern tale of the ages-old battle of the sexes carried to the extreme, Jack Ketchum again provides readers with an excursion into horror as relentless as a John Woo film.

 

A word of caution, this book contains scenes of extreme violence, and is definitely not for the faint of heart.

Right To Life

When Sara Foster is kidnapped in front of an abortion clinic in broad daylight, taken off a busy Manhattan street by a pair of total strangers – Stephen and Katherine Teach – she is three months pregnant wth her married lover’s child.

 

Her abductors seem to know that. They also seem to know where she lives, where she teachers, where she was born, who her lover is – even where her father plays golf on the weekends. They tell her about a mysterious worldwide Organization devoted to white slavery and what happens to those slaves who try to run away. What happens to their families and those they love.

 

That’s what Sara is now. Their slave.

 

They show her what happens if she tries to disobey.

 

She sleeps in a coffin-like box in the basement.

 

She’s fed according to their whim. Abused according to their whim.

 

They involve her in a brutal murder.

 

That’s just the beginning. Because Stephen and Katherine Teach have terrible plans for Sara.

 

And her baby.

 

Like his novels JoyrideStrangleholdThe Girl Next Door, and CoverRight To Life is a descent into madness and human evil which is all the more harrowing because it’s based on fact. Sara’s ordeal really happened to somebody just like you and me and it’s one that is vividly rendered. So consider yourself warned. This is disturbing graphic writing.

 

Not for the timid.

 

Like life.

Masks

(with Edward Lee)

 

Masks is a limited edition chapbook co-authored with Edward Lee produced for ChillerCon in October of 1999 by Sideshow Press. 

Father & Son

Father & Son is a limited edition chapbook of a previously unreleased story, only available through Camelot Books, as part of a promotion.

1 2 14