A winter haunting

303 pages

English language

Published Nov. 19, 2002 by W. Morrow.

ISBN:
978-0-380-97886-1
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
46836963

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3 stars (1 review)

A once-respected college professor and novelist, Dale Stewart has sabotaged his career and his marriage -- and now darkness is closing in on him. In the last hours of Halloween he has returned to the dying town of Elm Haven, his boyhood home, where he hopes to find peace in isolation. But moving into a long-deserted farmhouse on the far outskirts of town -- the one-time residence of a strange and brilliant friend who lost his young life in a grisly "accident" back in the terrible summer of 1960 -- is only the latest in his long succession of recent mistakes. Because Dale is not alone here. He has been followed to this house of shadows by private demons who are now twisting his reality into horrifying new forms. And a thick, blanketing early snow is starting to fall ...

5 editions

Review of 'A winter haunting' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

It turns out that this book is the sequel to a book, Summer of Night, that I've never read. It doesn't seem to matter much; I understood and liked it anyway.

It's a ghost story and a story about a man who has become self-destructive; an easy and entertaining read. It doesn't have the ambition of many Simmons novels, but it does have a few red herrings to keep you guessing about what is going on, as the past literally comes back to haunt the protagonist when he returns to his home-town and spends the winter trying to write a novel about his childhood in the home of his friend who died far too young.

Subjects

  • Haunted houses -- Fiction.
  • Divorced fathers -- Fiction.
  • Novelists -- Fiction.
  • Illinois -- Fiction.