In the Night Room, Peter Straub
In the Night Room, Peter Straub
List: $12.95 | Sale: $9.07
Club: $6.47

In the Night Room

Author: Peter Straub

Narrator: Jason Culp

Abridged: 6 hr 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/26/2004


Synopsis

WINNER OF THE BRAM STOKER AWARD • After a grotesque accident, a famous author discovers that her reality is not what it seems in this “imaginative, intricate, and electrifying” (Associated Press) horror novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Story.

“A powerful and arresting foray into the dark fantastic.”—The Washington Post Book World

Willy Patrick, respected author of the award-winning young adult novel In the Night Room, thinks she is losing her mind. She is drawn helplessly into the parking lot of a warehouse, knowing somehow that her daughter, Holly, is being held in the building. But this is impossible—Willy’s daughter is dead.

On that same day, author Timothy Underhill, who has been struggling with a new book about a troubled young woman, is confronted with the ghost of his nine-year-old sister, April. Soon after, he begins to receive eerie, fragmented emails from people he knew in his youth—people now dead. Like his sister, they want urgently to tell him something. When Willy and Tim meet, the frightening parallels between Willy’s tragic loss and the story in Tim’s manuscript suggest that they must join forces to confront the evils surrounding them.

About The Author

Peter Straub is the author of seventeen novels, which have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in New York City with his wife, Susan, director of the Read to Me program.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jonathan on August 02, 2012

About 20 pages into "In The Night Room," Peter Straub reveals that his previous book, "lost boy lost girl," was a bit of a put-on, a fictional novel written by Straub's fictional alter ego, Timothy Underhill. That seems kind of a dirty trick to play on readers who invested their time and suspension......more

Goodreads review by Maciek on October 04, 2011

I absolutely love the idea which Straub presents in this book - there is a very special edition of each published book, just one copy. It falls from the printing press like all the others, is distributed, stocked and sold, but it's different. It's the book that the author meant to write. The charact......more

Goodreads review by Kirsten on February 29, 2008

I've seen this panned elsewhere, but I really enjoyed it and got into it. I love the way Straub plays with reality in his books; for example, you've got this character, Tim Underhill, who tends to write books with the same title as Peter Straub books (like lost boy lost girl). But you're never reall......more

Goodreads review by Mike on November 20, 2023

At times, it's brilliant. At others, it's confusing, and others are just overlong, and for a relatively short book, that's not a good thing. An unnecessary follow-up to the brilliant Lost Boy, Lost Girl.......more

Goodreads review by Amy on November 16, 2007

There were alot of unique things about this novel: an author meeting his characters, dead people sending e-mails to the living, the concept of a "perfect" book. However, alot of the details and characters were far fetched and did not make sense. For example, why have the main character Tim Underhill......more


Quotes

“A powerful and arresting foray into the dark fantastic.”The Washington Post Book World

“So imaginative, intricate, and electrifying that readers will be tempted to race through the novel.”—Associated Press

“A chase novel and a metafictional fun ride that, like much of Straub’s work, takes genre elements and twists them into something unexpected.”Time Out New York

“A twisting, fast-paced plot.”USA Today

“A brilliant work of horrific fantasy . . . Anyone looking for a good read providing plenty of thrills while doling out literary meditations on the nature of fantasy vs. reality won't find a better book.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“[A] brilliant novel . . . Moving briskly while ranging from high humor to the blackest dread, this is an original, astonishingly smart and expertly entertaining meditation on imagination and its powers; one of the very finest works of Straub’s long career, it’s a sure bet for future award nominations.”Publishers Weekly

“Popular fiction of an intriguingly high order, deftly exploring how imagination not only draws on reality but can actually shape it.”Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“A fascinating jumble of fantasy and reality.”BookPage

"Straub’s truly twisted talent for weirdness takes off into a full-blown hurricane of reality-bending, mind-boggling proportions. . . . This book will really unravel your brains. Definitely a must-read.”Realms of Fantasy

“This must-read horror tale is simply incredible in every way. Tender, dark, and simmering with a wry irony that is just plain inspired, it’s the perfect book for a cold autumn afternoon.”New Mystery Reader

“Yet another brilliant piece of work by a writer who should long ago have been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award.”Amazing Stories