The Cypress House

Quotes

"Michael Koryta is one of our new dynamos in the world of books, and in The Cypress House he spreads his range, wedding suspense with the supernatural in the eeriness of 1930s Florida. He uses the psychology of place to penetrate the human heart and delivers his tale of hurricanes and love and hauntings with great narrative force. Koryta's becoming a wonder we'll appreciate for a long time."—Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter's Bone

"The Cypress House is a unique and entertaining blend of noir and paranormal suspense, with a tightly controlled supernatural thread as believable as the gunplay. Mr. Koryta is at the start of what will surely be a great career. He's now on my must-read list."—Dean Koontz, author of Lost Souls

"The Cypress House is a dazzling blend of suspense, the supernatural, and superb storytelling. What a gifted writer. Michael Koryta is the real deal."—Ron Rash, author of Serena

"Koryta is superb with mood and setting...the simmering tension erupts into a rolling boil by the bloody, spooky, and satisfying ending."—Keir Graff, Booklist

"Following up his acclaimed gothic, So Cold the River, Koryta blends gritty noir and ghostly visions in a novel that seems custom-designed for Nicolas "Ghost Rider" Cage. Arlen Wagner, a survivor of bloody battles in Europe, is on a train headed for a work camp in the Florida Keys when he sees smoke coming from the eyes of passengers and skeletons instead of bodies....the novel builds to a richly satisfying climax...A commanding performance in the field of supernatural noir."—Kirkus

"Koryta's masterful follow-up to So Cold the River effectively combines supernatural terror with the suffocating fatalism of classic American noir....Koryta excels at describing both scenery and his characters' inner landscapes. It's hard to think of another book with equal appeal to Stephen King and Cornell Woolrich fans."—Publishers Weekly

"You'll be hooked from the first sentence of this haunting thriller that twists like a water moccasin through the swamplands of Depression-era Florida, drenched in rain, blood, and evil. Jim Thompson noir with Stephen King spookiness."—Neil McMahon, author of Lone Creek and L.A. Mental

"An enthralling novel that easily melds mystery fiction, the supernatural and just a touch of the old-fashioned western and historical novels without losing the conventions of each genre. Yet The Cypress House is so grounded in reality that no plot turn or character rings false. The Cypress House works as a novel about post-war stress, small-town corruption and the dusty Great Depression. Koryta dredges up the dread that festers below the surface of the characters who reside at The Cypress House.... As he did in last year's supernatural-tinged So Cold the River, Koryta again shows his affinity for incorporating varied genres into a cohesive story and, along the way, stretching the boundaries of each."—Oline H. Cogdill, The Olympian, The Modesto Bee , The Sacramento Bee, The Lexington Herald Leader , The Bellingham Herald, and the Kansas City Star

"Michael Koryta is mining Stephen King territory [in The Cypress House] and carving out a spot all his own."—Sarah Weinman, Women's World

"There is an otherworldly quality to the Depression-era South in Michael Koryta's The Cypress House, and not just because the hero, Arlen Wagner, knows when people are going to die...The depiction of Florida's panhandle, an overgrown back-woods years before developers arrived, and the isolated inn on the gulf Coast beach where Arlen ends up with young Civilian Conservation Corps co-worker Paul Brickhill, are equally eerie....Deftly blending all genres, Koryta balances the scary violence of Judge Solomon Ward and his tame sheriff-a nightmare of despotic small-town lawmen peculiar to a later South-with the sexual currents stirred up among the three people effectively trapped in the house.... However counterintuitive, he makes this curious mix of supernatural prescience and gothic-noir work with a seamless atmospheric certainty."—P.G. Koch, Houston Chronicle