Showing results by author "Robert McCammon" in All Categories

Father John has lived his whole life without knowing a woman’s touch. Hard at first, his self-denial grew easier over time, as he learned to master his urges with a regimen of prayer, cold showers, and jigsaw puzzles. That changes the day that Debra Rocks enters his confessional. A rough-talking adult film actress, she has come to ask him to pray for a murdered costar. Her cinnamon perfume infects Father John, and after she departs he becomes obsessed.

December 1703 finds Berry Grigsby living as Mary Lynn Nash in a small English village where she has fallen victim to Professor Fell's involuntary drug experiments. Her mind is quickly deteriorating under the drug’s influence, and the only way to save her is a potion book that was stolen in an attack on the village orchestrated by a mysterious madman going by the name Cardinal Black. Matthew Corbett has volunteered to travel with Julian Devane, a self-proclaimed "fool and bad man" in the employ of Professor Fell, to hunt down the potion book.

As a master spy, Gallatin has proved he can take on formidable foes - and kill them. As a passionate lover, he attracts beautiful women. But there is one extra factor that makes Michael Gallatin a unique special agent - he is a werewolf, able to change form almost at will, able to assume the body of a wolf and its capacity to kill with savage, snarling fury. In the madness of war, Gallatin hunts his prey - ready to outthink his opponents with his finely tuned brain. Or tear their throats out with his finely honed teeth....

The year is 1703, and Matthew Corbett, professional "problem solver", is missing. Last seen by his friends in New York before he departed on a lucrative, seemingly straightforward mission for the Herrald Agency in Charles Town, he's been too long absent. His comrade-in-arms Hudson Greathouse has an increasing sense the young friend he thinks of as a son must have met with some unexpected peril.

It’s January of 1704, and Matthew Corbett continues his mission to Italy, accompanied by Hudson Greathouse and former enemy Professor Fell. They seek Brazio Valeriani and information about the mirror created by his father, the sorcerer Ciro. Legend claims the mirror can be used to summon demons from beyond. But fate has other plans for Matthew as their ship is disabled by a pod of whales, and they seek refuge on a secluded island. The islanders welcome them with a massive feast, but all is not what it seems.

It is not just the living ships of the monstrous Gorgons or the motion-blurred shock troops of the armored Cyphers that endanger the holdouts in the human bastion of Panther Ridge. The world itself has turned against the handful of survivors, as one by one they succumb to despair and suicide or, even worse, are transformed by otherworldly pollution into hideous Gray Men, cannibalistic mutants driven by insatiable hunger.

The Night Boat, Robert McCammon's third published novel, first appeared as a paperback original in 1980. Following on the heels of Baal and Bethany's Sin, it offered further proof that a writer of great narrative power and limitless potential - a writer who would achieve a significant position in modern popular fiction--had arrived.

Ever since Edgar Allan Poe looted a family's ignoble secret history for his classic story "The Fall of the House of Usher", living in the shadow of that sick dynasty has been an inescapable scourge for generations of Usher descendants. But not for horror novelist Rix Usher. Years ago he fled the isolated family estate of Usherland in the menacing North Carolina hills to pursue his writing career. He promised never to return. But his father's impending death has brought Rix back home to assume the role of Usher patriarch - and face his worst fears.

Bethany's Sin is a tiny, picturesque village in rural Pennsylvania. Its tree-lined streets, beautiful houses, and manicured exteriors offer - or appear to offer - both peace and a place of refuge. Evan Reid, a man haunted by his memories of the Vietnam War and by a history of viscerally disturbing dreams, comes to the village with his wife and daughter, hoping to make a fresh start after a series of discouraging setbacks. At first, all goes as planned.

Baal was Robert McCammon's first novel, a debut that would lead to some of the finest popular fiction of our time. This deluxe new audio edition from Subterranean Press will give McCammon's many fans both newcomers and longtime fans - the opportunity to trace the development of an extraordinarily talented man. The story begins with a horrific rape on the streets of New York City. Nine months after that violation, a most unusual child is born. His name is Jeffrey Harper Raines...

Ever since the copper mine closed, the West Texas desert hellholes of Inferno and Bordertown have been slowly dying. Snake River isn't the only thing that divides them. Racism, gang wars, and anti-Mexican sentiment have turned the sun-scorched flatlands into a powder keg. If anything can unite them for now, at least in awe and wonder, it's the UFO that comes soaring out of the clouds like a flaming locomotive.

Ever on the hunt for LaRouge, Lawson still travels by night but no longer does so alone. Crack-shot, whip-smart Ann has become his companion, on her own search for her vampire-taken father and sister. Lawson has been summoned from New Orleans and the Hotel Sanctuaire to Omaha by a wealthy man who needs his son retrieved from a band of outlaws. Lawson and Ann agree to take the case and travel to the town of Perdition where they find their prey - but things get complicated fast when a saloon shootout leaves an innocent girl badly injured. 

"Children of the Bedtime Machine”, a story by Robert McCammon, was originally published in the 2012 anthology Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury.

Michael Gallatin is a British spy with a peculiar talent: the ability to transform himself into a wolf. Although his work in North Africa helped the Allies win the continent in the early days of World War II, he quit the service when a German spy shot his lover in her bed. Now, three years later, the army asks him to end his retirement and parachute into occupied Paris. A mysterious German plan called the Iron Fist threatens the D-Day invasion, and the Nazi in charge is the spy who betrayed Michael’s lover. The werewolf goes to France for king and country, hoping for a chance at bloody vengeance.

For Lawson, the horrors that stalked the Civil War battlefield at Shiloh were more than just those of war. After being forcibly given the gift of undeath by the mysterious vampire Queen LaRouge, Lawson chose to cling to what remained of his humanity and fought his way free of the Dark Society's clutches. In the decades since, he has roamed late 19th-century America, doing what good he can as he travels by night, combating evils mundane and supernatural, and always seeking the key to regaining a mortal life. 

"The Deep End" by Robert McCammon: Everyone thinks the drowning death of Neil Calder in the local swimming pool was a tragic accident. Only his father knows better. Now, on the last night of summer, Neil returns in search of revenge.

Flooded by memories, poisoned by Agent Orange, Dan Lambert kills a man in a moment of fear and fury - and changes his life forever. Pursued by police and bounty hunters, Dan flees south toward the Louisiana bayous. In the swamplands he meets Arden Halliday, a young woman who bears the vivid burdens of her own past, and who is searching for a legendary faith healer called the Bright Girl. Looking for simple kindness in a world that rarely shows it, bound by a loyalty stronger than love, Dan and Arden set off on a journey of relentless suspense and impassioned discovery....

"Doom City”, a story by Robert McCammon, was originally published in 1987 in Greystone Bay II.

It is 1944. A message from Paris warns Allied Intelligence of something big in the works - something which might have serious implications for D-Day. The only way to get more information from the agent in Paris - now closely watched by the Gestapo - is to send in a personal courier. Russian émigré Michael Gallatin is picked for the job. In retirement as a secret agent since a grisly episode in North Africa, Gallatin is parachuted into occupied France, on a mission which will take him to the festering heart of the Third Reich on the scent of doomsday.

The Wolf and the Eagle is the account of an unlikely friendship between rival "men of action" and a harrowing portrayal of a lethal forced march through the North African desert.