House of Reckoning [Audiobook, CD, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

John Saul (Author), Angela Dawe (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 13, 2009

For more than three decades John Saul has haunted the New York Times bestseller list — and listeners imaginations — with his chilling tales of psychological suspense and supernatural horror. His instinct for striking the deepest chords of fear in our hearts and minds is unerring, and his gift for steering a tale from the light of day into the darkest depths of nightmare is at its harrowing best in House of Reckoning. After the untimely death of her mother, fourteen-year-old Sarah Crane is forced to grow up quickly in order to help tend her family’s Vermont farm and look after her grieving father, who’s drowning his sorrow in alcohol. But their quiet life together is shattered when her father is jailed for killing another man in a barroom brawl and injuring Sarah in a drunken car crash. Left in the cold care of a loveless foster family and alienated at school, Sarah finds a kindred spirit in classmate Nick Dunnigan, a former mental patient still plagued by voices and visions. And in eccentric art instructor Bettina Phillips, Sarah finds a mentor eager to nurture her talent for painting. But within the walls of Bettina’s ancestral home, the mansion called Shutters, Sarah finds something altogether different and disturbing. Monstrous images from the house’s dark history seem to flow unbidden from Sarah’s paintbrush — images echoed by Nick’s chilling hallucinations. Trapped for ages in the shadowy rooms of Shutters, the violence and fury of long-dead generations have finally found a gateway from the grave into the world of the living. And Sarah and Nick have found a power they never had: to take control, and take revenge.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set in Vermont, this supernatural thriller from bestseller Saul (Faces of Fear) updates but adds nothing new to a traditional story. Six months after 14-year-old Sarah Crane's mother dies from cancer, Sarah's father, Ed, accidentally kills a man in a fight. On top of that, a drunken Ed hits Sarah with his truck while he's behind the wheel. After Ed goes to prison for manslaughter, Sarah, whose leg was badly injured in the truck accident, is placed with a foster family. Mitch and Angie Garvey and their two teenage children treat Sarah like Cinderella, expecting her to serve meals and do all the chores. Meanwhile, word of Sarah's circumstances makes her an outcast at her new school. Only two people reach out to her: Bettina Philips, an art teacher labeled a witch, and fellow student Nick Dunnigan, who's also isolated by his peers and prone to scary visions. Needless to say, the mystical abilities Sarah discovers she possesses come in handy in turning the tables. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“The storytelling is . . . undeniably powerful as it brings to vivid life an adolescent’s zero-sum view of moral realities.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Scary . . . It is the house that is the real star of the story.”—Lincoln Journal Star
 
“John Saul has the instincts of a natural storyteller.”—People --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio on CD Unabridged; Unabridged edition (October 13, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1441805575
• ISBN-13: 978-1441805577
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 5.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (74 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #443,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

House of Reckoning is John Saul's thirty-sixth novel. His first novel, Suffer the Children, published in 1977, was an immediate million-copy bestseller. His other bestselling suspense novels include Faces of Fear, In the Dark of the Night, Perfect Nightmare, Black Creek Crossing, Midnight Voices, The Manhattan Hunt Club, Nightshade, The Right Hand of Evil, The Presence, Black Lightning, The Homing, and Guardian. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling serial thriller The Blackstone Chronicles, initially published in six installments but now available in one complete volume. Saul divides his time between Seattle, Washington, and Hawaii.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Perfectly Eerie Tale Presented Just in Time for the Halloween Season, October 19, 2009

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: House of Reckoning: A Novel (Hardcover)

John Saul has had success as a writer of popular horror fiction for over four decades. He has maintained his popularity by continuously applying the elements of horror and conflicted characterization that signifies this genre. With HOUSE OF RECKONING, his latest effort, Saul returns to this familiar landscape and once again features his signature element: the teenaged protagonist.

High school student Sarah Crane is lamenting the loss of her mother to cancer six months earlier. This tragedy has crippled her father, Ed, and has forced him to seek solace at the bottom of the bottle. And as if things weren't bad enough, his alcohol abuse serves as the catalyst for two horrific events: the manslaughter of a fellow bar patron during a drunken brawl, and the injuring of Sarah in a drunk driving accident. The former deed places Ed in prison and Sarah in foster care.

Sarah eventually is taken in by the Garvey family. Ironically, her foster father Mitch happens to be a prison guard where Ed is being held. The Garveys are staunchly (if not hypocritically) religious, and Sarah does not fit in well there. Furthermore, she must face the constant taunts of her new high school classmates, who mock both her permanent limp and her murderer father. The only student with whom she is able to connect is another outcast, Nick Dunnigan, a delusional schizophrenic.

Sarah also finds comfort in an art class, taught by a unique character named Miss Bettina Phillips. Bettina resides alone with several dogs and cats in Shutters Mansion, a place that once served as an insane asylum. In eerie fashion, she is able to channel feelings from Bettina's home, and she begins to paint images of Shutters and some of its less-than-friendly past inhabitants. Additionally, while Sarah is painting these unfamiliar images, Nick is having visions of his own that involve acts of violence and terror stemming from the dark heart of the old asylum.

As these events begin to unfold, the Garvey family prohibits Sarah from speaking with Bettina outside of class and labels her a "witch." In similar fashion, Nick's father won't allow Nick to maintain a friendship with his new classmate and forbids his mentioning of Shutters or Bettina. Why do these adults and other members of the town seem to fear Bettina and Shutters so fiercely? What sordid secrets are they trying so desperately to hide?

At the heart of the novel is the answer to these questions, as Shutters contains more than just Bettina and her animal comrades. It also houses the history of Warwick, and the town's secrets and sins. The time for "reckoning" is now upon them as Sarah and Nick become the keys to unlocking the strange doors found inside Shutters and learning that not all past memories are benevolent.

Although HOUSE OF RECKONING wraps itself up a little too quickly, the journey to the conflicted climax is worth the trip. John Saul is at his best when he gets inside the heart and mind of his teenaged characters, and the team of Sarah Crane and Nick Dunnigan firmly represents teen angst at its darkest and most dangerous. This is a perfectly eerie tale presented just in time for the Halloween season.

--- Reviewed by Ray Palen

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Slow starter, but eventually gives thrills and chills, October 7, 2009

By 

B. Walker "Basia's Bookshelf" (Wisconsin, United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: House of Reckoning: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

House of Reckoning is John Saul's 36th novel and he doesn't veer too far off the plot track of his previous 35, with spooky kids, a haunted house and a laundry list of baddies just begging to be punished.

The basic plot: Sarah Crane has led a pretty cruddy 14 years. Her mother died, and her father, drowning in his own grief, gets drunk and kills a man - and then driving home drunk, hits Sarah on her bike, breaking her hip and leg and setting into motion the remainder of the book.

Now in an abusive foster home, Sarah is an outcast, a "crip" because of her limp. Nick Dunnigan is equally shunned by his classmates; he suffers from apparent schizophrenia, hearing voices in his head. That is, until he meets Sarah. I won't spoil the second half of the book very much, but will say that Sarah, Nick and art teacher Bettina Philips have a sort of unholy connection to a former mental institution that Bettina has inherited and is living in. Anyone who's read previous John Saul novels (especially his earliest work) knows what follows; ghostly voices, a sort of psychic connection between Sarah and Nick, a house that comes alive with a vengeance (literally).

Pros for House of Reckoning: there are some interesting plot points that tie the three lead characters together, and towards the end of the book, Saul does live up to his reputation for turning on the chills. I also liked his filling out of all of the characters. Given the short-ish length of the book, it takes great skill to get into the heads of the number of characters playing key roles in the story. Saul's writing is generally crisp; there wasn't a time when I was tempted to skip ahead, even for the first half of the book, which was actually rather boring.

Cons: it took roughly 200 pages in for the real action to start. I kept expecting something, some more chilling foreshadowing or supernatural signs of where the book was heading. There was a small bit of both, between Sarah's artwork, Nick's voices and Bettina's pets going all Cujo-ish, but it just wasn't something that would make me turn all the lights on, something I actually remember doing when I read Saul's first few books, which I highly recommend for their scary quotient. The ending handful of pages, wrapping up the book were a little too..something. Pat? I can't believe I'm complaining that the storyline became unbelievable at the end, given what went on for the previous hundred pages, but it just left me thinking, "Really? So that's it?"

All in all, I would recommend this book to fans of Saul's obviously - there's nothing here that would be surprising in terms of his style, but it's still a good example of the genre and a very quick read once you get past the first couple of slow background-filling chapters. There's a bit of gore (not much), some scary endings for some characters and some overall spookiness; I would put this more on the side of paranormal suspense than a horror story.

This wouldn't be a book I'd read more than once, but it's not a bad way to spend a handful of chilly autumn hours.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good premise but fails to live up to the plot's potential..., October 1, 2009

By 

ChibiNeko "Sooo many books, so little time!" (Whereever I go, here I am.) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: House of Reckoning: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

While I do like John Saul's work, this book just isn't the best thing he's put out. The book promises a lot of stuff, some of which is typical Saul fare: children in peril, human & supernatural evils run amok, & twisty plot turns. Unfortunately the book just couldn't live up to those promises, at least not entirely.

The plotline follows the character of Sarah, a young girl whose mother died when she was about 14. When her father is incarcerated for a barroom brawl gone murderous, not to mention accidentally running her over, it seems as if Sarah will never be happy again. These fears only grow stronger when her new foster family is barely hospitable to her & grows even less so by each passing day. Only her art class & a strange boy lifts Sarah's spirits, even as mysteries spring up around her & evils from the past mingle with the evils of the present.

Where do I begin with the critique of this book? While I did enjoy reading this book, I just felt as if the book took the easy way out of everything. The plotline was interesting, but it felt sort of... mechanical. Everything seemed to be a little rushed & none of the book's characters or plot progression seemed to be organic. It felt more like "plot point A leads to plot point B which leads to...". Don't get me wrong- this is an enjoyable read for a few hours, but I've read far better from John Saul in the past. This just came across as sort of a first draft of sorts. It just needed to be fleshed out more & have the rough edges smoothed out. The ending especially needs to be slowed down a bit- it just seems to go a little too fast for everything that has happened. (Maybe if some of the ending happened earlier in the book?)

But overall this book was ok. (Even when he's not at his peak, Saul's still a pretty entertaining read.) Die-hard collectors of Saul will undoubtedly get this to keep their hardback collections up to date & die-hard fans will rush out to get this as well. But for the average John Saul fan, I suggest waiting for the paperback or getting it from the library. And if you haven't read Saul at all, I recommend reading some of his earlier stuff first. This book isn't bad, but it's not his best.