Customer Reviews

The Manor

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

There are two things I really love about Nicholson's books, his characters and his Appalachian settings. I found The Manor to be as fast a read as both The Harvest and The Red Church were, well paced and suspenseful using fully fleshed out characters and lush settings.

I felt like I knew Anna and Mason and the artiste-de-general of the Manor's guests, I felt dizzy at the crossing of the bridge and I could smell the loamy woods surrounding the manor. So now gather round this setting with these people, and get ready for a frightening ride.

A group of artists are invited to the mountain retreat of Korban Manor, an isolated and rustic place with no electricity, to practice their crafts and attend a party the night of the October blue moon.

Among the painters and sculptors and photographers and writers, Anna seems a bit out of place, being a paranormal researcher, invited to Korban Manor to hunt ghosts. Or was she summoned? Anna has the gift of second sight, and an unusual attachment to the strange house.

Mason is a sculptor, trying to make his break, and when he gets to Korban Manor his talent seems to explode, his hands flying over the wood as he carves out an image of Ephram Korban.

Everybody's talent has taken off, underneath the watchful stare of the portraits that hang in every room of the house and under the withering heat of the constantly lit furnace. Something isn't right here, and the line between the living and the dead is growing thinner and thinner as the blue moon approaches. The guests grow uneasy and suffer from horrid nightmares, and the staff just keeps getting odder and odder. The dead are awake.

I don't want to give too much away because Nicholson has a few lovely surprises in store for his readers, having created an old fashioned ghost story with some eerie new twists that sent shivers of delight running down my spine. Using just the right mix of creeping fear and bloody splatters, The Manor is a fast-paced, delightful read that is best savored in the lonesome hours under dim lighting.
Enjoy!!

Ephram Korban had been an admirer of art in all forms - literature, painting, photography, music, sculpture, and more. He died in an October on the night of a rare blue moon. Miss Mamie, his last living relative, still abides by Ephram's last wish. The deluxe manor is tucked away in the Blue Ridge mountains and serves as an artists' retreat. The manor is isolated from the rest of the world. It has no electricity and is totally self sufficient. Miss Mamie often chooses an elite group of people to stay in the manor for six weeks. During this time, artists will concentrate on their form of art uninterrupted.

Yet even though it all looks serene at first glance, it is anything but. Within the halls of the manor something is feeding off the energies of those in the manor. Something determined to reclaim life at any cost. And the next October blue moon is due.

***** Author Scott Nicholson sends cold chills down the spines of his readers. The dead actually seem to come back to life due to his dark writing talent. This time Nicholson has managed not only to keep me awake reading long into the night, but also to invade my dreams with dark visions. "THE MANOR", in my opinion, is his best novel yet! *****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

This was my first Scott Nicholson novel. I was looking for a good read in the horror genre, and I came upon The Manor. After reading many glowing reviews, I figured it was worth a look-see.

I must say that I was drawn in to the story immediately, by both the character introductions and the fascinating setting. Nicholson has a gift for penning description, but while this is his strength, it also turns out to be his weakness. There is a time for an author to step back -- after giving ample preliminary description -- and allow the reader to internally visualize the settings...to come to "own" the story by this bit of inner personalization. Nicholson denies his readers that chance, often getting so caught up in his rich descriptive passages, I quickly got to the point where I hoped he would run out of similes (an actual metaphor now and then would have been a welcome change)!

But, alas, this was not the case, and, in some parts of this novel, it seems almost as if the same flowery, unctuous "muse" that took hold of the character of Nicholson's corpulent author, had also taken hold of Nicholson himself.

That having been said, the book did hold my interest, and held a few unexpected surprises...always a plus in this genre. The characters were well-developed and the use of backwoods superstitions, spells, cures and the like was very effective. It's worth looking into on ink-black nights so cold they hold your soul in a death grip... ;)

The Manor is Scott Nicholson's third book and it also stands as his best. Although his first two efforts were quite entertaining, The Manor proves that Nicholson is a leading voice in the horror field. With this book, he takes his place amongst some of the genre's modern masters, proving that there is still originality and talent to be found out there.

The Manor itself is quite a simple story. A group of artists are invited to an old manor for a six week retreat where they will be working their crafts. The manor's owner, Ephram Korban, was a strange, powerful man who always found a way to get what he wanted. Even after his death, his presence seems to run through the halls of the old house. His framed painted face is mounted on the wall of every room in the house, and every servant seems to talk about the man as though he was still alive.

Mason, a young sculptor looking for fame in all the wrong places, is one of the guests at the manor. As soon as he starts to work, he almost becomes possessed by his new creation; a life-sized wood statue of the Manor's owner. We have a photographer, who seems to be obssessed with the house. A filmmaker who decides the manor would be the greatest subject for a documentary. A writer who desperately wants to find his talent and skills again... In fact, the only guest who isn't an artist is Anna, a young clairvoyant who seems to have a link with spirits, and the house itself. Needless to say, Anna will play a huge role in the events that will soon follow the guests' arrival.

The scares slowly creep up on you. Paintings change by themselves. Strange figures appear in the woods at night... It takes a while for the book to really pick up the scares, but once it does, it does delievers the goods. The finale is particularly well written, a 60 pages tour de force that is so relentless it will leave you breathless.

The Manor never goes overboard on frights of gore. As a matter of fact, there is very little gore to be found in the story. What we have instead is quiet horror, the kind that relies on suspense more than anything else. The book reminded me of The Picture of Dorian Gray mixed with something Daphne Dumorier would have written.

The Manor is Scott Nicholson's best book yet. After finishing it, I can honestly say that I can't wait to get my hands on the next one!

I recently went on a Scott Nicholson binge, having learned that he lives in the same area I do in the North Carolina mountains. Though this novel doesn't have as many rural characters as his others, it still strikes that same cord, tapping into mountain folklore for its chills.

This isn't his best book, but it's better than most of what's out there. Anna pissed me off because she seemed a little too annoying (I thought Mason deserved a better love interest), but she was the right character to focus on the haunting. I like his use of artists as a spin on the usual haunted house story. I used to date an artist and they are seriously all messed up, so I can see how such a strange blend of egos would create havoc if you threw in a ghost or two. Read all of his books--you won't regret it.

The title says it all. This is another typical ghost story in which a wealthy dead guy gathers together a bunch of strangers to his isolated, creepy old mansion. Ghosts appear, people get picked off, and then the evil ghost is defeated. One of the ghosts has a chopped off hand that crawls around and attacks people ala Thing in the Addams Family. If that were not ridiculous enough, the main ghost inhabits a statue carved out of wood and stumbles around like Frankenstein's monster carrying his head. The final straw is that the good guys are annoying and just not likeable. There is no vivid and mind capturing description of the mansion or its history. There is no sense of mystery or suspense. This book is just bad and I want my money back.

Ephram Korban, in life, was a great lover of art. In death, he feeds upon it. Rather, he feasts upon artists who come to his manor--used an an artist resort. Here, artists are encouraged to expound upon their creativity. There's the author who finds himself living for one purpose: to write the novel he know will make the critics love him. There's the sculpter, who's a bit suspicious of things, but finds himself carving a life-size statue of Korban.

This October is not normal, however. For this year, Anna Galloway has arrived. With deep and terrifying ties to the manor's past, Anna must face herself, her fears, and her destiny--and must chose between certain death, and unimaginable evil.

Scott Nicholson's novel "The Manor" is engaging and unique. With realistic characters and a penchant for the macabre, it certainly stands out in today's rather bland horror realm. This novel will certainly keep you up late at night, turning the pages to see what other horrors await you. A great, enjoyable read.

Scott Nicholson is an author who has enjoyed a great deal of success from the beginning of his publishing career. His first novel “The Red Church” won a Stoker for best first novel and his popularity has steadily increased since then. If a comparison were to be made with another famous horror author, I would have to point out Bentley Little. The first obvious similarity is in the titles, which are always two words, beginning with “The”. Also, the setting always takes place in a small-town that is increasingly overcome with a malevolent supernatural force. But while I admire Nicholson’s work so far, in my opinion his novels fall short of Little’s, clearly the master of this type of horror. “The Manor” is Nicholson’s third novel.

“The Manor” was built in 1902 by Ephram Corban, a wealthy if somewhat reclusive artist. It was built high in the Appalachian mountains and intended to serve as a muse for artists looking for inspiration. Once old man Corban passed away, The Manor was turned into an artists’ retreat and run by Corban’s daughters and granddaughters. In this story, we follow a group of about a dozen artists including photographers, painters, sculptors on a trip to The Manor, who seek both relaxation and inspiration for their work. But some of these artists soon come to realize that the Manor is haunted grounds and that the spirit of Ephram Corban is still very much alive. Unfortunately for them, being nestled high into the Appalachian mountains surrounded by endless miles of wilderness means there’s not much of a chance for escape…

I would like to start off by saying that I loved “The Red Church”, Nicholson’s first novel. It was explosive, original, scary and one of the best horror debuts I had ever laid eyes on. But I can’t help but get the feeling Nicholson might be regressing a little bit. Although I haven’t read his second novel “The Harvest” the general concensus among most Amazon reviewers seems to be that it is a less than spectacular effort. “The Manor” had great potential and the storyline seemed to promise something great but it didn’t deliver on its promise. For one, it just isn’t very scary. “The Red Church” dealt with religious fanatics, a truly scary concept, horror novel or otherwise. But in “The Manor” we get a group of elderly women worshipping an old dead man. Eh…not quite as frightening. What turned me off as well was how slow the novel was progressing. It took until past the halfway mark of this 320-page novel until any of the characters even began to feel a sense of menace or that anything was wrong. The ending was admittedly explosive but the buildup was way too slow. I also felt like Nicholson focused too much of his attention on the same handful of characters all the time, even though there were over a dozen guests at The Manor.

What made me still enjoy this novel to a certain extent is Nicholson’s gifts of description and setting. The mist-shrouded cover with the full moon on it doesn’t lie; this is a supremely atmospheric novel. I felt like I could practically breathe the mountain air, smell the pines, hear the crickets. This has become one of Nicholson’s specialties, to engulf us in an Appalachian mountain setting, and he does it extremely well. I’ll definitely keep reading Nicholson since he writes the type of horror fiction that I enjoy, I just hope he writes with more of a sense of urgency and makes more things happen next time around.

The North Carolina Arts Council awarded a grant to Mason Jackson to work on his sculpture for six weeks with free room and board at the Korban Manor that once belonged to Ephraim Korban. Parapsychologist Anna Galloway has dreamed of Korban Manor for a long time and now that she is dying, she goes to the place that has haunted her. Anna is amazed that her dream was about an actual place and from her first day on the property she sees ghosts, the shades that Korban controls.

At first nobody realize that Korban is neither dead nor alive but lives in the walls and the glass of the home he loved so much. Miss Mamie, who runs the manor, is really Korban's wife Margaret; she remains young due to the power that her husband possesses. Everyone on the property who is not a guest is a ghost for Korban to use as fuel to sustain his existence. On the night of the blue moon, if all goes according to plan, Korban will live once again and only Anna and Mason can stop him if they dare.

Fans of Bentley Little and Peter Straub will love this old fashioned ghost story that will scare readers half to death out of fear Korban will turn them next. From the beginning the audience is aware that ghosts roam THE MANOR and the outside property but they don't have a clue what Korban's ultimate goal is or why each room has a fireplace that is always lit or why a picture of Korban that is highly prominent in each room gives the viewer a chill. Sooth Nicholson has written an edgy and frightening ghost story that readers will thoroughly enjoy.

Harriet Klausner

Nicholson's third novel is not only his best, but shows the most improvement and promise. This is a very well written book. When his storytelling catches up with his writing skills, this author will be quite dangerous. The ghost/spirit/revenge premise has been done before, but I loved the idea of an artist getaway to hone ones creativity. I enjoyed the characters and the atmosphere and look forward to Scott Nicholson's new book, The Home.