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A brilliant supernatural thriller with a modern twist, and a triumphant return from one of Britain s best-loved writers. At the end of a track, on the outskirts of an ordinary coastal town, lies a dilapidated house. Once, a group of amateur ghost hunters spent the night there. Two of them don t like to speak about the experience. The third can t speak about it. He went into the basement, you see, and afterwards he screamed so hard and so long he tore his vocal cords. Now, a group of teenagers have decided to hang out in the old haunted house. Dismissing the fears of the others, their leader Jezza goes down into the basement and comes back up with a children s book, full of strange and colourful tales of a playing-card world, a fairytale world, full of Jacks, Queens and Kings, unicorns and wolves. But the book is no fairytale. Written by Austerly Fellows, a mysterious turn-of-the-century occultist, it just might be the gateway to something terrifying and awfully final. As the children and teenagers of the town are swept up by its terrible power, swept into its seductive world, something has begun that could usher in hell on earth. Soon, the only people standing in its way are a young boy with a sci-fi obsession, and his dad an unassuming maths teacher called Martin
When a group of teenagers discovers a cursed book in a dilapidated basement, they inadvertently unleash a malevolent force that threatens to consume their coastal town. Jezza, the leader of the group, retrieves the occult tome written by the mysterious Austerly Fellows, unaware that its pages serve as a gateway to a lethal, otherworldly realm. As the town's youth fall under the book's seductive influence, the narrative shifts to follow a young boy obsessed with science fiction and his father, a quiet mathematics teacher, who must confront the encroaching supernatural threat. The story utilizes a shifting perspective to track the rapid escalation of the occult influence as it bleeds into reality.
This novel is characterized by its blend of dark fantasy elements and contemporary suburban horror tropes. The premise suggests a focus on the corrupting influence of forbidden knowledge and the vulnerability of a small town to external, ancient threats. Readers likely encounter a narrative that balances the eerie, surreal imagery of the playing-card world with the grounded, desperate efforts of the protagonists to contain the chaos. The work positions itself as a suspenseful exploration of how quickly a seemingly innocent discovery can spiral into a catastrophic struggle for survival.
Page Count:
534
Publication Date:
2012-01-01
Publisher:
HarperCollins Publishers Limited
ISBN-10:
0007453418
ISBN-13:
9780007453412
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