Mendenhall echoes with the footsteps of the last home-bound students heading off for Thanksgiving break, and Robin Stone swears she can feel the creepy, hundred-year old residence hall breathe a sigh of relief for its long-awaited solitude. Or perhaps it's only gathering itself for the coming weekend.
As a massive storm dumps rain on the isolated campus, four other lonely students reveal themselves: Patrick, a handsome jock; Lisa, a manipulative tease; Cain, a brooding musician; and finally Martin, a scholarly eccentric. Each has forsaken a long weekend at home for their own secret reasons.
The five unlikely companions establish a tentative rapport, but they soon become aware of a sixth presence disturbing the ominous silence that pervades the building. Are they victims of a simple college prank taken way too far, or is the unusual energy evidence of something genuine - and intent on using the five students for its own terrifying ends? It's only Thursday afternoon, and they have three long days and dark nights before the rest of the world returns to find out what's become of them. But for now it's just the darkness keeping company with five students nobody wants -- and no one will miss.
The Harrowing
St. Martin's Press
Hardcover $21.95
ISBN # 0-312-35748-6
Paperback $6.99
October 30, 2007
ISBN-10: 0312357494
ISBN-13: 978-0312357498
Nominated for the Horror Writers Association's Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel.
Boston's Briarwood Medical Center is a bewildering maze of six separate hospitals symbiotically entwined, connected by glass bridges, underground tunnels, indoor and outdoor gardens -- its own self-contained city. But Briarwood, like every hospital, is also a threshold... to the other side.
Idealistic Boston District Attorney Will Sullivan has it all: a beautiful, beloved wife, Joanna; an adorable five-year old daughter, Sydney, and a real shot in the Massachusetts Governor's race. Then Will's life is shattered when Sydney is diagnosed with a malignant, inoperable tumor. Now Will and Joanna are living at Briarwood Hospital, waiting for their daughter to die. Joanna is slowly losing her mind with grief and Will himself starts to question his own sanity. He has begun to see bizarre and inexplicable things around him -- patients disappearing from elevators, monstrous nuns watching from the shadows.
The strange occurrences seem to center around a charismatic counselor named Salk, who befriends Will and talks mysteriously about the power of faith to heal.
But when Sydney suddenly, miraculously begins to improve, Will suspects that Joanna has made a terrible bargain to save their daughter's life. Now he must uncover the truth in order to save them all.
The Price
St. Martin's Press
February 19, 2008
ISBN-10: 0312357516
ISBN-13: 978-0312357511
Pre-order from your favorite bookstore, or from Amazon
Alex's story "The Edge of Seventeen" will appear in The Darker Mask, out from Tor Books August 19, 2008.
The Darker Mask is an illustrated anthology of noir superhero and fantasy stories, conceived by Christopher Chambers and Gary Phillips, featuring Walter Mosley, Tannarive Due, Steven Barnes, Mike Gonzalez, Reed Farrel Coleman, Ann Nocenti, Eric Jerome Dickey, Jerry Rodriguez, LA Banks, Peter Speigelman, Naomi Hirahara, Wayne Wilson and Alexandra Sokoloff.
Available for pre-order from your favorite bookstore, or Amazon.com.
Boston's Briarwood Medical Center is a bewildering maze of six separate hospitals symbiotically entwined, connected by glass bridges, underground tunnels, indoor and outdoor gardens -- its own self-contained city. But Briarwood, like every hospital, is also a threshold... to the other side.
The Harrowing is out