Peter Straub

"What was the worst thing you've ever done? In the sleepy town of Milburn, New York, four old men gather to tell each other stories--some true, some made-up, all of them frightening. A simple pastime to divert themselves from their quiet lives. But one story is coming back to haunt them and their small town. A tale of something they did long ago. A wicked mistake. A horrifying accident. And they are about to learn that no one can bury the past forever...

Peter Straub masterfully weaves  horror and suspense into a love story unlike any other: the ballad of Ballard and Sandrine.
 
Ballard and his considerably younger lover Sandrine have been brought together by a shared erotic obsession of the darkest kind. As they travel down a remote part of the Amazon River on a luxurious yacht, they spend their days indulging in their macabre pastime. Through a haze of pain and pleasure, the...

On a lush Caribbean island, ten-year-old Tom Pasmore is almost killed in an accident. As he grows, Tom develops an obsession with death and plunges into an investigation of two murders, one in the present and one from the past.

Two apprentices studying under a master magician spend a season residing in a dark house located in the deep recesses of the Vermont forest. Learning secrets best left unlearned, they enter a world of incalcuable evil and terror. Only one of them will survive the ordeal.

Tim Underhill comes back to his hometown to investigate the murder of a childhood friend's wife.

A collection of stories from the past twenty-five years includes "Mr. Club and Mr. Cuff," "The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine," and "Blue Rose."

"In The Process (is a Process All Its Own), Peter Straub brings back Tillman Hayward, a latter day Jack the Ripper familiar to readers of The Skylark and A Special Place. Tilly, known for good reasons as The Ladykiller, stands at the dark heart of this astonishing novella. Tilly is a classic serial killer, and we watch him go about his "work" in the American Midwest of the 1950s. His story is one of madness and bloodlust artfully concealed beneath...