Maxima Library

Bentley Little wurde in Arizona geboren, kurz nachdem seine Mutter die Weltpremiere von

Psycho

besucht hatte. Vor seiner Karriere als Autor schlug er sich mit Gelegenheitsjobs als Reporter, Bibliothekar, Zeitungsbote oder Kassierer durchs Leben.

Mit seinem ersten Roman gewann Bentley Little den begehrten Bram-Stoker-Award und machte damit Stephen King auf sich aufmerksam. Seitdem gilt er als Meisterschüler des »King of Horror« und steht seinem Lehrer in nichts nach: Seine Romane begeistern weltweit Millionen Fans. Bentley Little lebt mit seiner Frau in Arizona und schreibt derzeit an seinem nächsten Roman.

Aus dem amerikanischen Englisch von

Dr. Rolf Tatje

Für die Originalausgabe:

Copyright © 2003 by Bentley Little

Titel der Originalausgabe: »The Mailman«

OLD FRIENDS TERRORS...

Dion Semele is a teenager trying to make friends in a new school and meet the girl of his dreams. But something is happening deep inside him:

a powerful force is struggling to escape. His sleep is disturbed by dreams of a past world that seeks to control him.

Penelope Daneam is smart and pretty and trying to be normal, despite her unusual family. Since birth she has been cared for by a sisterhood of women who own a local Napa winery. It is here that Dion and Penelope will meet their true fate. Not as lovers, but as catalysts for a reign of incredible terror.

Dominion has risen.

Titel der Originalausgabe: »The Policy«

Spanning over twenty years, 20 masters and modern authors of hardcore horror share their most bad-ass stories in this special edition from Comet Press. Many hard to find and out of print, some that were banned, Necro Files covers every imaginable mode of mayhem including serial killers, necrophilia, cannibals, werewolves, zombies, sex fetishes, psychopaths, snuff, occult, and more stories that dial into the dark side of human nature.

Barry and Maureen have just been approved as tenants by the Association. Pity they never read the fine print on the lease. It could be the death of them...

From Publishers Weekly

With this haunting tale, Little (The Town) proves that he hasn't lost his terrifying touch. Barry and Maureen Welch are thrilled to exchange their chaotic California lifestyle for the idyllic confines of Bonita Vista, a ritzy gated community in the unincorporated fictional town of Corban, Utah. But as Bonita Vista residents, they're required to become members of the neighborhood's Homeowners' Association, a meddling group that uses its authority to spy on neighbors, eradicate pets and dismember anyone who fails to pay association dues and fines. Maureen, an accountant, and Barry, a horror writer who is banned by the association from writing at home, soon find themselves trapped in the kind of deranged world that Barry once believed existed only within the safety of his imagination. The novel's graphic and fantastic finale demonstrates the shortsightedness of the Association and will stick with readers for a long time. Little's deftly drawn characters inhabit a suspicious world laced with just enough sex, violence and Big Brother rhetoric to make this an incredibly credible tale.

Review

"You must read this book." —Stephen King

"Fast-paced, rock-'em, jolt-'em, shock-'em...terror fiction. Unusually clever." —Dean Koontz

Now comes the hottest horror yet from the Bram Stoker Award winner... 

They're four strangers with one thing in common-a mysterious train choking the sky with black smoke, charging trackless across the American night...and carrying an unstoppable evil raised from the depths of history that will bring each of their worst fears to life.

From Publishers Weekly

In the new book by Bram Stoker Award–winner Little (

Dispatch

), strangers across the U.S. are each pursued by different supernatural forces as they fall into the path of a ghost train rumbling into the present day from a dark chapter in American history. Switching among characters—college freshman Angela Ramos in Flagstaff, Ariz.; divorced park ranger Henry Cote in Canyonlands National Park, Utah; Jolene, fleeing her husband to Bear Flats, Calif., with eight-year-old Skyler in tow; and Dennis Chen, on his first cross-country road trip—Little turns the screws bit by bit, bringing his unfortunate charges face to face with multiple terrors, including haunted houses, mummified zombies, a pair of succubi and a room full of jarred human body parts. The novel draws from historical record and modern-day hot-button topics, bringing to bear immigration issues from the time of the Transcontinental Railroad to the present. Readers might tire of the revolving door structure—characters switch off on a per-chapter basis—before the stories converge in northern Utah, and might find the multiple strands a bit overstuffed and under-scary; still, this novel offers Steven King–size epic horror for those with the patience for it. 

Review

[Little] is on par with such greats as Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Peter Straub. -- Midwest Book Review

How far would you go with a hitchhiker who'd left behind an unimaginable trail of horror and destruction?

How would you feel if your father's new bride was something dredged up from the bowels of hell?

What would you do if you discovered an old letter suggesting one of America's Founding Fathers had been a serial killer?

How long would you last in a mysterious border town that promised to let you in on one of its most gruesome secrets?

This is The Collection — thirty-two stories of hot blood and frigid terror that could have come only from the mind of Bentley Little. And that's a scary place to be. 

From the Bram Stoker Award-winning “horror poet laureate” (Stephen King)

When Gary’s girlfriend Joan vanishes, calls to her parents’ home yield only dead air. Her school records are gone. There is no longer any evidence that she even existed. Most disturbing of all is what Gary does find: a warning and a tantalizing clue, leading to a mysterious backward cult known as the Homesteaders. Now Gary may be the next to disappear.

Five complete strangers from across America are about to come together and open the door to a place of evil that they all call home. Inexplicably, four men and one woman are having heart-stopping nightmares revolving around the dark and forbidding houses where each of them were born. When recent terrifying events occur, they are each drawn to their identical childhood homes, only to confront a sinister supernatural presence which has pursued them all their lives, and is now closer than ever to capturing their souls....

Bob Jones is ordinary, from his appearance right down to his very name. No one seems to take notice of him, not his co-workers, his girlfriend, or even his own parents. But Bob learns he's not alone when he's taken in by a band of people that suffer similarly. Calling themselves "The Ignored", the deadly vengeance they intend to wreak is sure to make them more than just memorable.

Once upon a time, waiting for the mail was filled with warm anticipation. But there's a new mail carrier in town, one who's delivering lethal letters stuffed with icy fear. Now nothing--not even the most outstanding citizens or the most secret weaknesses--is safe from the sinister power of this malicious mailman!

Amazon.com Review

It's the first day of summer in a small American town. We meet a school teacher, his wife, and their young son, Billy. One thing, one seemingly minor thing, goes wrong. And all that was safe and ordinary slowly unravels into nightmare. This familiar premise for the contemporary horror novel has rarely, if ever, been developed so brilliantly as in Bentley Little's 

The Mailman

. A tall, pale postal carrier with carrot-red hair may seem an unlikely candidate for the embodiment of evil, but Little reveals the personality behind the mailman's ever-present smile with such finesse, you'll be more than happy to fall under his spell. By the time the frightened town folk are chanting, "No mail! No mail! No mail! No mail!"--and Billy ends up half-naked in a dark room, next to a soiled wedding dress--you'll be jumping right out of your skin.

"A nail-biting, throat-squeezing, nonstop plunge into darkness and evil. I guarantee, once you start reading this book, you'll be up until dawn." --Rick Hautala

"Grabs the reader and yanks him along through an ever-worsening landscape of horrors...a terifying ride with a shattering conclusion."--Gary Brandner

DIVINE PROPHECY. HOLY TERROR

Strange things are happening in the quiet town of Randall, Arizona.

The local minister vanishes, his church defiled by blasphemous obscenities scrawled in blood....A crazed old woman in her eighties becomes pregnant. Herds of animals are discovered butchered in a field. And one by one, the good folks in town are falling victim to the same unspeakable fate. Now an itinerant preacher has arrived spreading a gospel of cataclysmic fury.

Darkness is falling on Randall, Arizona. The smell of fear lingers in the air. And stranger things are yet to come....

In a small Arizona town, a man counts his blessings: a loving wife, two teenage daughters, and a job that allows him to work at home. Then "The Store" announces plans to open a local outlet, which will surely finish off the small downtown shops. His concerns grow when "The Store's" builders ignore all the town's zoning laws during its construction. Then dead animals are found on "The Store's" grounds. Inside, customers are hounded by obnoxious sales people, and strange products appear on the shelves. Before long the town's remaining small shop owners disappear, and "The Store" spreads its influence to the city council and the police force, taking over the town! It's up to one man to confront "The Store's" mysterious owner and to save his community, his family, and his life!

Darkness is descending on the small town of Rio Verde, Arizona. An evil older than time is rising from the desert, waiting for night to fall and a reign of terror to begin...Brad Woods had performed a lot of autopsies, but never one like this. The body was purged of all blood. And something told Brad this was only the beginning of a nightmare.Fear made Sue Wing run from the darkened school that night, fear she could only name in the Cantonese of her grandmother: Cup-hu-girngsi...corsope-who-drinks-blood...Vampires. The Devil, incarnate, stalking the streets of Rio Verde. Small-town reporters like Rich Carter didn't believe in such things. But he would come to believe with a faith borne of horror after horror...

Welcome to McGuane, Arizona. Population: 200… 199… 198… 197…

Gregory Tomasov has returned with his family to the quaint Arizona community of his youth. In McGuane, the air is clean, the land is unspoiled. Nothing much has changed. Except now, no one goes out after dark. And no one told Gregory that he shouldn't have moved into the old abandoned farm on the edge of town. Once upon a time something bad happened there. Something that's now buried in its walls. Something now reborn in the nightmares of Gregory's young son. Something about to be unleashed. What happened once is going to happen again in… The Town. You can't go home again.

It begins in a small Southwestern town. Then it spreads. Across the country a series of strange deaths have overtaken the living. And a stranger compulsion has overtaken the dead.

In a travesty of life they drift with bizarre purpose toward an unknown destination. The walkers have become an obsession for investigator Miles Huerdeen. His father is one of them.

Now, lured into the shadow of the restless dead, Miles is a step closer to a secret as old as time ... to a reality as dark as hell. For Miles is following them into the deep end of an unfathomable nightmare.

From Publishers Weekly

The overwhelming sense of doom with which Little (The Revelation) imbues his newest novel is so palpable it seems to rise from the book like mist. Flowing seamlessly between time and place (from the present-day hassles of HMOs to the once-uncharted territory of the American West), the Bram Stoker Award- winning author's ability to transfix his audience while relinquishing scant details about the foreboding evil is superb. Private investigator Miles Huerdeen is on a mission to find a link between the victims in a bizarre nationwide string of deaths dating back decades, his own recurring nightmares and an elderly client's prophetic handwritten list of dead men's names. Miles's world is suddenly turned upside down when he discovers his own father - who suffered a fatal stroke - purposefully striding around his bedroom, naked except for a pair of cowboy boots, having scared off his "God-Fearing Christian" nurse. Miles's obsession with his father's transformation into a zombie leads him to the families of other dead "walkers" and on a supernatural journey into the Arizona desert. Readers will gladly suspend disbelief for Little's deft touch for the terrifying, as he slowly reveals a shocking connection between the mindless army of reanimated corpses and their ultimate destination, Wolf Canyon, formerly a government-sponsored witch colony, where a vengeful resident's evil powers have yet to be fully unleashed. If booksellers are on their toes, they'll tell readers that Stephen King, a big fan of Little's work, was reading another book by this author at the time of his infamous accident. This novel has the potential to be a major sleeper in the horror category.