Winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel
From a new master of horror comes an apocalyptic showdown between the residents of a secluded, rural town and the deadly evil that confronts them wherever they turn . . .
Evil Doesn't Die
The cozy little town of Pine Deep buried the horrors of its past a long time ago. Thirty years have gone by since the darkness descended and the Black Harvest began, a time when a serial killer sheared a bloody swath through the quiet Pennsylvania village. The evil that once coursed through Pine Deep has been replaced by cheerful tourists getting ready to enjoy the country's largest Halloween celebration in what is now called "The Spookiest Town in America."
It Just Grows Stronger
But then--a month before Halloween--it begins. Unspeakably desecrated bodies. Inexplicable insanity. And an ancient evil walking the streets, drawing in those who would fall to their own demons and seeking to shred the very soul of this rapidly fracturing community. Yes, the residents of Pine Deep have drawn together and faced a killer before. But this time, evil has many faces--and the lust and will to rule the earth. This struggle will be epic.
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''Maberry supplies plenty of chills, both Earth-bound and otherworldly, in this atmospheric horror novel . . . This is horror on a grand scale, reminiscent of Stephen King's heftier works.'' -- Publishers Weekly
''Without a doubt this prolific author is the next Stephen King. Maberry deserves more than a Bram Stoker Award for this; he deserves Bram Stoker to rise from his grave and shake his hand.'' --New World Reviews
''A chilling tale--lyrical, melodic, and dark. Maberry breathes new life into modern horror fiction.'' -- Scott Nicholson, bestselling author of The Red Church
''Serves up scares like pancakes at a church social.'' --Gregory Frost, bestselling author of Shadowbridge
''If I were asked to select only one new voice in horror fiction to read today, it would be Jonathan Maberry.'' -- Katherine Ramsland, bestselling author of The Vampire Companion
''If you think small town horror has nothing new to offer, you have a surprise in store. Ghost Road Blues demonstrates that even the most haunted town in America is unprepared for the full depth of evil, either human or inhuman.'' --Don D'Ammassa, author of Blood Beast--This text refers to the
Audio Cassette
edition.
JONATHAN MABERRY is a New York Times best-selling and multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author, magazine feature writer, playwright, content creator and writing teacher/lecturer. His books have been sold to more than twenty countries.
His novels include the Pine Deep Trilogy: GHOST ROAD BLUES (Pinnacle books; winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel in 2006), DEAD MAN'S SONG (2007) and BAD MOON RISING (2008); the Joe Ledger series of action thrillers from St. Martins Griffin: PATIENT ZERO (2009, voted one Best Zombie Novel of 2009; winner of the Black Quill Award and a Bram Stoke Award finalist), THE DRAGON FACTORY (2010; now available), THE KING OF PLAGUES (2011), ASSASSIN'S CODE (2012), EXTINCTION MACHINE (2013); THE WOLFMAN (NY Times bestseller from Tor and winner of the Scribe Award for Best Adaptation, based on the Universal Pictures film starring Benecio Del Toro, Emily Blunt and Sir Anthony Hopkins); the Benny Imura series of Young Adult dystopian zombie thrillers from Simon & Schuster: ROT & RUIN (2010) and DUST & DECAY (August 30, 2011), FLESH & BONE (2012) and FIRE & ASH (2013); and the forthcoming zombie thriller DEAD OF NIGHT (October 2011). Watch the book trailer for DEAD OF NIGHT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czc4WmjY1yo
Jonathan will be featured in a History Channel special on zombies scheduled to air October 26.
His nonfiction works include: VAMPIRE UNIVERSE (Citadel Press, 2006), THE CRYPTOPEDIA (Citadel, 2007 -winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction; co-authored by David F. Kramer), ZOMBIE CSU: The Forensics of the Living Dead (Winner of the Hinzman and Black Quill Awards and nominated for a Stoker Award; 2008), THEY BITE! (2009 co-authored by David F. Kramer), WANTED UNDEAD OR ALIVE (2010 co-authored by Janice Gable Bashman), and THE VAMPIRE SLAYERS FIELD GUIDE TO THE UNDEAD (2001, written under the pen name of Shane MacDougall).
He writes a variety of projects for Marvel Comics involving BLACK PANTHER, DOOMWAR, WOLVERINE, DEADPOOL, CAPTAIN AMERICA, THE X-MEN, FANTASTIC FOUR and the NY Times bestselling MARVEL ZOMBIES RETURN, MARVEL UNIVERSE vs THE PUNISHER, and MARVEL UNIVERSE VS WOLVERINE. All of Jonathan's comic book collections will be released as Graphic Novel collections.
Recent short stories include "Pegleg and Paddy Save the World" (HISTORY IS DEAD, Permuted Press 2007), "Doctor Nine" (KILLERS, Swimming Kangaroo Press, 2008; and reprinted in THE STORIES (in) BETWEEN Edited by Greg Schauer, Jeanne B. Benzel, and W.H. Horner. Fantasist Enterprises, 2009), "The Adventure of the Greenbrier Ghost" (LEGENDS OF THE MOUNTAIN STATE 2, Bloodletting Books, 2008), "Clean Sweeps" (AND SO IT BEGINS, Dark Quest Books, 2008), "Family Business" (THE NEW DEAD, St. Martins Press, 2010), and "Zero Tolerance" (THE LIVING DEAD 2, Night Shade Books). Jonathan also created two Joe Ledger short stories for the Internet: "Countdown", "Deep, Dark", "Material Witness", "Zero Tolerance", and "Dog Days", all available on audio from Blackstone.
Jonathan is the co-creator (with Laura Schrock) of ON THE SLAB, an entertainment news show in development by Stage 9 for ABC Disney / Stage 9. He was also a 'blog correspondent' on Sony's zombie-themed web show 'WOKE UP DEAD'; and a recurring character on 'IT'S TODD'S SHOW'.
Jonathan's Big Scary Blog (www.jonathanmaberry.com) focuses on the publishing industry. Jonathan's interviews include Charlaine Harris, Sandra Brown, Gayle Lynds, Alafair Burke, James Rollins, Harlan Coben, Jeff Abbott, John Saul, Jonathan Kellerman, Barry Eisler, Robert Kirkman, Maz Brooks, CJ Box, Laurell K. Hamilton, Jack Ketchum, Tom Piccarilli, Dale Brown, Kevin J. Anderson, Joe Lansdale, Peter Straub, Ramsey Campbell, and many other best-selling authors.
Jonathan is a Contributing Editor for The Big Thrill (the newsletter of the International Thriller Writers), and is a member of SFWA, IAMTW, MWA, SCBWI, SFWA and HWA. He is a frequent guest of honor and keynote speaker at genre cons and writers conferences, including Central Coast Writers, KillerCon, AnthoCon, Necon, ThrillerFest, Sisters in Crime, BackSpace, PennWriters, Dragon*Con, PhilCon, Horror-Realm, HorrorFind, Monster Mania, Philadelphia Writers Conference, Balticon, The Write Stuff, Hypericon, LunaCon, and many others.
Jonathan regularly visits local middle schools, high schools and colleges to talk about books, reading, publishing and the writing life.
Jonathan is a founding member of The Liars Club, a group of networking publishing professionals that includes celebrated authors Merry Jones, Gregory Frost, Jon McGoran, Ed Pettit, Dennis Tafoya, Keith Strunk, Don Lafferty, Kelly Simmons, Marie Lamba, Solomon Jones, Keith DeCandido, Sara Shepard, William Lashner, Laura Schrock, and the late L.A. Banks. The Liars Club works to support booksellers, raise awareness and support for public libraries, and cultivate a joy of reading and books.
On the last Sunday of every month Jonathan hosts the Writers Coffeehouse, a free three-hour open-agenda networking and discussion session for writers of all genres and levels of skill. The event is held at the Barnes & Noble in Willow Grove Pennsylvania.
Jonathan has been a popular writing teacher and career counselor for writers for the last two decades. He teaches a highly regard series of classes and workshops including Write Your Novel in Nine Months, Revise & Sell, Experimental Writing for Teens, and others. Many of his students have gone on to publish in short and novel-length fiction, magazine feature writing, nonfiction books, TV, film, and comics.
In 2004 Jonathan was inducted into the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame largely because of his extensive writings in that field. His martial arts books include Self-Defense for Every Woman (Vortex Multimedia, 1985); Introduction to Asian Martial Arts (Vortex Multimedia, 1986); The Self-Defense Instructor's Handbook (Vortex Multimedia, 1990); Judo and You (Kendall Hunt, 1991); Ultimate Jujutsu Principles and Practices (Strider Nolan, 2002); The Martial Arts Student Logbook (Strider Nolan, 2002); Ultimate Sparring Principles and Practices (Strider Nolan, 2003).
Visit his website at www.jonathanmaberry.com or find him on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace.
I'll probably get blasted for this review but I have to voice a dissenting opinion from the bulk of the reviews here. Let me first say that this isn't a bad book, but I simply don't feel it warrants the ratings it is getting. I've read far too many horror books which are better and which I feel deserve four and five star reviews before this book. My mom had a copy of this book which I borrowed a few weeks ago. When I looked on Amazon I saw a slew of five star reviews for it and very, very few dissenting reviews. That's normally a sign of a very good book so I borrowed her copy and started reading. The book starts out well, and there is actually two excellent scenes in the beginning which jerk your chain hard. Then the book settles down....then it slows down.... then it kind of begins to drag. Truthfully I got to within 30 pages of the end and then I put it aside and didn't finish. Why? I realized that the book couldn't fit the conclusion in the next 30 pages. It was obvious the story wasn't going to finish in this book. I went back to the website and discovered that this is the first of a trilogy. The problem here is that, in my view, the book's pacing is all wrong and I was tired at the thought of having to read two more books to get to the conclusion.
Why is the pacing wrong? Mayberry sets out at a good pace and then falters along the way. Actually he doesn't so much as falter, as begin to insert more and more space between moments of dramatic tension. All the elements are there in this story. You have some whacked-out crazies, Evil vampire spirits, scary scenes, violent scenes, good people struggling against bad people, etc. but the tension didn't escalate at the end of the book, it slowed down, took a deep breath and obviously began to prepare for the sequel. This really threw me off and I didn't enjoy it.
The other problem I had was that the "Evil" spirit just didn't come off any nastier than humans. Frankly, one of the human characters seemed nastier and came with a bigger body count than the vampire spirit. The goal of the vampire spirit seems to be to wipe out the town. In an age of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dachau, Auschwitz and other modern horrors the goal of wiping out a town seems like small potatoes. With humans being so accomlished at horror all by themselves you'd think that supernatural Evil would try to set a new standard, yet it came across as something of an underachiever.
In all honesty my feeling at the end of the book was that it was OK but not worth the bother of investing enough time to read two more books. The characters never really developed into truly complex, three dimensional beings, the tension ratcheted down rather than up, and my feeling was that I had read much better, much scarier, and much more enjoyable books. I'd recommend John Dies at the End as an example of five star horror. The supernatural Evil in that one makes humans look like wanna-be evildoers and it is a tremendous book. Try that one and then tell me that Ghost Road Blues deserves the same rating; it doesn't. Or try Infected: A Novel for an example of almost palpably painful escalating tension and five star horror. So while this isn't a horrible book it does have flaws which make me reserve higher ratings for books that I feel are much better.
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I don't know how Amazon became a debating society, but I was looking at a few of the recent reviews and when one person commented that they thought that the author was soliciting reviews, I thought...what a shockingly rude thing to suggest. He uses as his "argument" (and I use this term loosely since it is based on supposition rather than any actual facts) that many of the reviewers had not posted before. I spent a little time wandering through Amazon and found that most of the folks who review a book are first timers. I was when I reviewed my first book online, but that does not mean that I was cajoled or coerced by the author. And just for the record -no I don't know Mr. Maberry, though I have seen his name listed in stores for book signings.
All of that aside, I thoroughly enjoyed Ghost Road Blues, and can understand the comparisons with some of the more established writers, such as Stephen King; but his approach is not a copycat method. He uses an almost Gothic approach to building tension slowly, letting it creep up on you, and then jumping out unexpectedly.
This is fresh writing, and I will certainly be referring the book to my friends. Living at the seaside as I do, I certainly undertsand the value of a good beach read, and this one thoroughly satisfies.
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This is my first horror novel since high school, and I bought it thinking it was a mystery (the cover looks like a mystery novel). I was surprised to find out that the mystery is built on a supernatural story, and that the book is the first of three. Sooo...I read it anyway, and boy this guy hits a homerun out of the park on his first try. Though I would rather have had everything wrapped up in one book, I have to say that I really dug the way the plot twisted and turned.
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