Books & Films

Father & Son

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

Cover

In 1985 the war in Vietnam had been over for ten years. A lot of people were trying to forget it. Not Jack Ketchum. Having never Been There, he was busy researching the hell out of it – aided by confidants and friends – for what was to be his third published novel, Cover

 

Ketchum’s fix on the war was typically minimalist. Take one battle-haunted veteran, a good, tough honest man whose grip on reality is rapidly disintegrating now that his wife and son have left him, living alone in the woods, in deep forest, trying to stay peaceful and simply outlast his demons. Then intrude upon his fragile world a group of weekend campers. A Mailer-esque world-famous novelist. His wife. His mistress. His agent. A Rolling Stone photographer. A jealous friend.

 

Mix and shake.

 

A limited edition from Gauntlet Press, If purchased from the publisher, it also came with the Ephemera chapbook featuring poems written during 1969, and the Selections CD featuring excerpts from Cover, read by Ketchum.

 

Ephemera

Ephemera was offered as a premium by Gauntlet Press in conjunction with their limited edition hardcover of Cover.

 

This limited edition chapbook contains pieces written during the summer of 1969 and features a self-portrait on the cover.

 

Contents: 

  • on the circumstance of marat/sade
  • rehearsal in situ
  • Notes: October 31, 1968 (Graffiti?)

Hide and Seek

I don’t believe in omens, but I think you can know when you’re in trouble.

 

Thus begins Jack Ketchum’s riveting second novel Hide and Seek.

 

It’s a book about games. Reckless, dangerous games. Games you might even want to play yourself if you’re with the right people. But shouldn’t. Not ever…

 

Dead River’s a sleepy little town on the coast of Maine without much going for it. The Great Depression hit hard and never let go. Even now, sixty-odd years later, there’s not much to do, not much going on. So that when a trio of friends, rich college kids, arrive there on a forced march with their parents for summer vacation they have to make their own amusements. And they do, in spades.

 

Dan’s a local and didn’t get a chance to go to college. There was never the money. He works in a lumberyard hauling two-by-fours and furring around all day with a forklift. He’s even more bored than he knows.

 

When the college kids arrive, that changes.

 

The most daring of the three is a beautiful, troubled girl named Casey. She’s not opposed to stealing caviar or cars or running around naked in graveyards. For Casey the thrill’s the thing and the riskier the better.

 

Dan falls for her, hard. And gradually becomes the fourth member of the group the poor relation.

 

But games need escalation. It’s a need that finds them at last in an old abandoned house at night, a house reputed to be haunted, where phantom lights burn in broken windows. Where something lurks waiting in the dark…

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.

Night Visions 10

In 1984, the legendary Night Visions series was conceived by Dark Harvest Press as a showcase for the outstanding short fiction being produced by the best of the established authors and the most talented of the new writers in the fields of horror and dark fantasy.

 

In 2001, the series was resurrected by Subterranean Press with Night Visions 10, featuring original novellas by Jack Ketchum and John Shirley, and five stories by David B. Silva.

 

Jack’s contribution, The Passenger, follows the story of a woman who gets a flat tire, leading to a stretch of bad luck as she becomes a passenger in a car bound for Hell.

The Lost

It’s 1969, and the Vietnam War is raging. A rough time for most kids. You either work like hell to stay in school or hightail it to Canada or else Uncle Sam comes knocking at your door and the next thing you know you’re slogging through the rice paddies and trying not to think about all those body bags shipping back to the World every day.

 

Not so for Ray and Tim. They’ve slipped through the cracks. They’re neither college kids nor grunts. They’re undraftable.

 

But Ray and Tim have their own problems.

 

Murder, for one.

 

A murder Ray committed four years ago because he felt like it. A murder to which Tim, along with Ray’s sometime-girlfriend Jennifer, are accomplices. A murder which — for at least one world-weary cop — simply won’t go away. He knows Ray did it but can’t prove it. Now, on the verge of quitting his job, with nothing much to lose, he decides to have one last shot at goading Ray into blowing his arrogant cool, into doing something really stupid.

 

Which Ray’s already doing, just by being who he is.

 

He’s a possessive, egotistical, compulsive liar. He’s dealing drugs. But mostly he’s chasing skirts. He’s all but dumped Jennifer and is courting not one new girl but two, doing anything and everything he can to impress them. One girl finds his weird posturing repulsive, but Ray refuses to hear that. The other’s playing with him — and might be just as dangerous as he is, moving him further and further into waters way over his head. It doesn’t help that both girls are college-bound and Ray isn’t, or that one of them’s the cop’s best friend’s secret lover. It doesn’t help that Jennifer’s turning into a drugged-out booze-hound in front of his very eyes. It doesn’t help that Tim sees this as a pretty good time to make his move on Jennifer. And it sure doesn’t help that Ray’s got a rage inside him that could make a cyclone look like a breezy summer day.

 

Things are converging. Something’s going to crack. Something’s going to break loose into a world of pain.

 

And who will be The Lost?

The Lost

It was the summer of 1965. Ray, Tim and Jennifer were just three teenage friends hanging out in the campgrounds, drinking a little. But Tim and Jennifer didn’t know what their friend Ray had in mind. And if they’d known they wouldn’t have thought he was serious. Then they saw what he did to the two girls at the neighboring campsite – and knew he was dead serious.

 

Four years later, the Sixties were drawing to a close. No one ever charged Ray with the murders in the campgrounds, but there was one cop determined to make him pay. Ray figured he was in the clear. Tim and Jennifer thought the worst was behind them, that the horrors were all in the past. They were wrong. The worst was yet to come.

Eyes Left

A story of what happens when a pair of friends end up cruising the wrong girl. Delightfully twisted, and a lot of fun, it will definitely make you think twice before considering that one night stand…

Triage

Never-before-published, full-length novellas of terror, suspense, weirdness, and erotic darkness by Jack Ketchum, Richard Laymon, and Edward Lee.  All three novellas start with the same premise… a stranger walks into a place of business, pulls out a gun, and opens fire…

 

Triage is an exploration of mankind’s dark side, and all copies are signed by Jack Ketchum, Edward Lee, and Matt Johnson.

 

Contents:

  • Triage by Richard Laymon
  • In the Year of Our Lord: 2202 by Edward Lee
  • Sheep Meadow Story* by Jack Ketchum

 

*A new story featuring Stroup, the “hero” of many of the stories in Broken on the Wheel of Sex

Station Two

Station Two follows a not-so-typical night in a Greek restaurant somewhere in the city. Nice quiet dinners are interrupted Ketchum-style. 

Right To Life and Two Stories

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.

 

This edition contains two additional stories.

 

Contents:

  • Right To Life
  • Brave Girl
  • Returns

Red

First U.S. edition of Red.

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…

Red

First U.S. mass-market paperback edition. Also contains the novella The Passenger.

 

It all started with a simple act of brutality. Three boys shot and killed an old man’s dog. No reason, just plain meanness. But the dog was the best thing in the old man’s world, and he wasn’t about to let it pass. He wanted justice, and he’d make sure the kids paid for what they did, even if it cost him his life. They picked the wrong old man to mess with. And as the fury and violence escalate, they’re about to learn that… the hard way.

 

Contents:

  • Red
  • The Passenger
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