The Unwanted [Abridged, Audiobook, CD] [Audio CD]

John Saul (Author), Joyce Bean (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 2003

Cassie Winslow is sixteen. She has just lost her mother in a terrible accident. Now, lonely and frightened, she has come to live with the father she barely knows and his new family in tiny False Harbor on Cape Cod. For Cassie, the strange, unsettling dreams that come to her suddenly in the dead of night are merely the beginning. Very soon, Cassie Winslow will come to know the terrifying powers that are her gift. And in the village of False Harbor, nothing will ever be the same.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Cassie Winslow is sixteen. She has just lost her mother in a terrible accident. Now, lonely and frightened, she has come to live with the father she barely knows and his new family in tiny False Harbor on Cape Cod. For Cassie, the strange, unsettling dreams that come to her suddenly in the dead of night are merely the beginning. Very soon, Cassie Winslow will come to know the terrifying powers that are her gift. And in the village of False Harbor, nothing will ever be the same. --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

From the Inside Flap

Cassie Winslow is sixteen.  She has just lost her mother in a terrible accident.  Now, lonely and frightened, she has come to live with the father she barely knows and his new family in tiny False Harbor on Cape Cod.  For Cassie, the strange, unsettling dreams that come to her suddenly in the dead of night are merely the beginning.  Very soon, Cassie Winslow will come to know the terrifying powers that are her gift.  And in the village of False Harbor, nothing will ever be the same. --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio on CD; Abridged edition (November 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590868919
• ISBN-13: 978-1590868911
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,068,422 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

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "Lonliness and the feeling of being unwanted is ...terrible." Teresa Calcutta, February 20, 2011

By 

michael a. draper (Guilford, CT) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Unwanted (Mass Market Paperback)

Sixteen year old Cassie Winslow feels alone and unwanted after her mother dies in an automobile accident.

Her parents were divorced and her father remarried. Her father has Cassie come to live with him and his family in Cape Cod. When she arrives, she makes friends with her neighbor, Eric Cavanaugh who is the same age. However, most of the other students at the high school take the lead from Eric's old girlfriend, Lisa Chambers. As bullies, they shut her out and make hurtful comments about her so that Cassie doesn't know how she will fit in.

Cassie is drawn to the one person in town who is also alone, the eccentric, Miranda. Miranda is considered odd and lives by herself in a home in the Marsh.

When Cassie comes to Miranda's home and they talk, Miranda tells her that now, Cassie is hers and that she, Miranda, won't let anyone harm her. Besides being eccentric, Miranda has the power to communicate and control a cat and an albino hawk that live at her home.

At her father's home, Cassie feels like an intruder and eventually comes to think of Miranda's house as her real home.

As the days go by, Cassie and Eric bond together. Eric is also a friend of Miranda and when Eric is also mistreated by other students and his baseball coach, we observe strange, supernatural things happen to them. Is it witchcraft? Is it just a coincidence?

John Saul does a standout job at keeping the reader guessing while at the same time providing a high level of suspense. The pacing is also well done with moments of high suspense followed by calmness, thus making the next moment of fear more intense. Toward the conclusion, the action is propelled faster and faster as possible supernatural forces follow Eric and Cassie.

The author also provides some twists and surprises. I enjoyed the novel but felt that some of the action was predictable. Nevertheless, I felt entertained.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars first rate horror read, June 19, 2002

By 

orange (Philadelphia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Unwanted (Mass Market Paperback)

Being a fan of horror genre,Dean Koontz in particular,and looking to expand my horizons I picked up the Unwanted.At first,I thought this book to be rather similar to Dean Koontz style,but soon I was proven wrong.John Saul is a very solid writer in his own right,from the first pages he creates suspense that captures you and keeps you turning page after page.Some of the book was a bit predictable,but that made the twists in it so much more enjoyable.In the end I found it to be alltogether somewhat darker then Koontz writing,with somewhat ambiguous characters,neither good nor bad,but walking the gray territory in between.There were other differences,which I can't list at the risk of giving away some of the plot and overall I was very impressed.I will certainly be checking out more of John Saul's books and I highly recommend this book to any fan of the horror genre or just a good fast paced read.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Good John Saul Book, May 16, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Unwanted (Mass Market Paperback)

For some reason, I always get this book mixed up with "Second Child," probably because of the similar plot lines--a young woman is orphaned and then taken in by her distant family in New England. Plus it's been several years since I've read this book (sometime during my high school or middle school years), which adds to the confusion.

Anyway, the similarities between the two books are fairly obvious, in that the protagonist, 15-year-old Cassandra "Cassie" Winslow, loses her mother in a car crash in California and is consequently sent to live with her estranged father and his new family in False Harbor, Massachusetts, a setting that gives "The Unwanted" its somewhat Puritan/witch trial charm. It's here that a triangle of psychic power is reawakened between Cassie, Eric Cavanaugh (her 16-year-old neighbor), and Miranda Sikes (the local bag lady/witch who's been haunting her dreams lately). Soon Cassie becomes aware of powers she never knew she had--powers that are dangerous enough to kill. ("Carrie," anyone?)

"The Unwanted" is certainly a must-read if you're a Saul fan and/or enjoy supernatural horror. This is one of many good books by him.