A Head Full of Ghosts - Softcover

Tremblay, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062363247 ISBN 13: 9780062363244

Publisher: William Morrow & Company, 2016

Synopsis

WINNER OF THE 2015 BRAM STOKER AWARD FOR SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN A NOVEL

A chilling thriller that brilliantly blends psychological suspense and supernatural horror, reminiscent of Stephen King's The Shining, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, and William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist.

The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia.

To her parents' despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie's descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts' plight. With John, Marjorie's father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming, the family agrees to be filmed, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend.

Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie's younger sister, Merry. As she recalls those long ago events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast on television begin to surface--and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed, raising vexing questions about memory and reality, science and religion, and the very nature of evil.

About this title

Review:

"A Head Full of Ghosts scared the living hell out of me, and I'm pretty hard to scare."--Stephen King

"Tremblay expertly ratchets up the suspense until the tension is almost at its breaking point."--Kirkus Reviews

"The novel is stylishly written and well-conceived."--Booklist

"[A] scary story, indeed."--BookPage

"Dark, brilliant, and impossible to predict, [this] is more than a perfect horror story. It's a smart and savage look at American culture in all its madness, and the price girls are forced to pay by a society obsessed with spectacle and sin."--Cara Hoffman, author of So Much Pretty and Be Safe I Love You

"A Head Full of Ghosts doesn't end just because you close the book. Some horror, it bleeds through the pages, gets onto your hands, stays with you. You'll be thinking about this one long after you've read it."--Stephen Graham Jones, author of Demon Theory and Ledfeather

"Paul Tremblay is an astonishingly talented writer, but even better, he's twisted, and fun. A Head Full of Ghosts is mind-bending--scary, sad, sweet, funny, sick. ... . Terrifying, hilarious, smart, and satisfying."--Stewart O'Nan, author of The Speed Queen, The Night Country, and A Prayer for the Dying

"This will easily be remembered as one of the most powerfully disquieting and deeply unsettling novels of the year, and may mark something of a turning point in the mainstream horror genre."--Shock Totem

"By turns horrifying, very funny, melancholy, ironic and, with each page, dazzlingly original, A Head Full of Ghosts is a one-book rocket ride through contemporary society where, if Evil doesn't actually exist in a Biblical sense, we're just the folks to invent it on our own."--The Day newspaper

"Paul Tremblay's terrific A Head Full of Ghosts generates a haze of an altogether more serious kind: the pleasurable fog of calculated, perfectly balanced ambiguity."--New York Times Book Review

Book Description:

A chilling thriller that brilliantly blends psychological suspense and supernatural horror, reminiscent of Stephen King's The Shining, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0062363247
• ISBN 13: 9780062363244
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320