Background
Straub, Peter Francis was born on March 2, 1943 in Milwaukee. Son of Gordon Anthony and Elvena (Nilsestuen) Straub.
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(A woman commits suicide for no apparent reason. A week la...)
A woman commits suicide for no apparent reason. A week later, her son– fifteen-year-old Mark Underhill–vanishes. His uncle, novelist Timothy Underhill, searches his hometown of Millhaven for clues that might help unravel this horrible dual mystery. He soon learns that a pedophilic murderer is on the loose in the vicinity, and that shortly before his mother’s suicide, Mark had become obsessed with an abandoned house where he imagined the killer might have taken refuge. No mere empty building, the house whispers from attic to basement with the echoes of a long-hidden true-life horror story, and Tim Underhill comes to fear that in investigating its unspeakable history, Mark stumbled across its last and greatest secret: a ghostly lost girl who may have coaxed the needy, suggestible boy into her mysterious domain.
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(In life, not every sin goes unpunished. GHOST STORY F...)
In life, not every sin goes unpunished. GHOST STORY For four aging men in the terror-stricken town of Milburn, New York, an act inadvertently carried out in their youth has come back to haunt them. Now they are about to learn what happens to those who believe they can bury the past -- and get away with murder. Peter Straub's classic bestseller is a work of "superb horror" (The Washington Post Book World) that, like any good ghost story, stands the test of time -- and conjures our darkest fears and nightmares.
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(One summer night in 1955, a boy and his cousin plunge nak...)
One summer night in 1955, a boy and his cousin plunge naked into the moonlit waters of a rural quarry. Only one of them emerges. Just as he had promised he would on that fateful night two decades earlier, Miles Teagarden--now divorced and a struggling writer--returns to his family home in Arden, Wisconsin. But the landscape he once knew so well has turned eerie and threatening. In the small town, his erstwhile friends and rivals, even his blood relatives, view him with suspicion. Their paranoia seems justified when another beautiful blonde teenage girl goes missing—much as his cousin Alison did all those years ago. Miles feels a sinister force is at work, gathering strength. As the anniversary of the tragic night approaches, he begins to fear that Alison will find a way to make their date . . .
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(Peter Straub's Blue Rose trilogy (Koko, Mystery, and The ...)
Peter Straub's Blue Rose trilogy (Koko, Mystery, and The Throat) is one of the landmark accomplishments of modern popular fiction. Ranging from the Caribbean to Vietnam to the American Midwest and spanning decades of tumultuous history, these books are both unforgettable narratives and indelible portraits of people in extremis, struggling to survive in a world marked by grief, loss, pain, trauma, and homicidal madness. The four stories gathered here are offshoots of that larger fictional universe. Each one stands entirely on its own. Together, they shine a revelatory light on the mysteries and hidden corners of the novels that inspired them. "Blue Rose" recounts a defining moment in the childhood of Koko's Harry Beevers, the moment when the ten-year-old Harry discovers his capacity for violence and brutality. "The Juniper Tree" describes, with almost unbearable clarity, a lonely young boy's encounter with adult betrayal, and with the darker aspects of human sexuality. "The Ghost Village" takes us to the phantasmagoric landscape of Vietnam, where the barriers between the living and the dead begin to dissolve, to mesmerizing effect. "Bunny is Good Bread" is arguably Straub's single most harrowing story. With relentless attention to detail, it anatomizes the creation of a human monster through abuse, cruelty, and neglect. These disturbing, beautifully written stories have a moral weight and emotional resonance that only the finest fiction achieves. They are the clear product of a master storyteller at the very top of his game. No one who reads them is likely to forget them, or come away unchanged.
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(The terrors afflicting the sleepy town of Hampstead, Conn...)
The terrors afflicting the sleepy town of Hampstead, Connecticut, were beyond imagination. Sparrows dropping dead from the trees like rotten fruit, disfiguring diseases spreading like wildfire, inexplicable murders and child drownings shattering the lives of the citizens - never can such a list of horrors have afflicted one town. But the evil madness had a long history. A catastrophe had struck Hampstead every thirty years since its foundation 300 years before - yet only Graham Williams, a writer and descendant of one of the original founders, had looked into the 'black summers' and their mysterious origins. When he discovers that descendants of the three other original settlers are back living in the town, he knows it will be the blackest summer yet. The true first edition of Floating Dragon is the Underwood Miller signed limited edition published in 1982.
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(With over 10 million copies of his novels in print, Strau...)
With over 10 million copies of his novels in print, Straub now records two haunting stories. "The Blue Rose" looks at a young boy's fascination with hypnosis. "A Short Guide to the City" tells of a strangely suffering Midwestern city.
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(In his latest soul-chilling novel, bestselling author Pet...)
In his latest soul-chilling novel, bestselling author Peter Straub tells of a famous children’s book author who, in the wake of a grotesque accident, realizes that the most basic facts of her existence, including her existence itself, have come into question. Willy Patrick, the respected author of the award-winning young-adult novel In the Night Room, thinks she is losing her mind–again. One day, she is drawn helplessly into the parking lot of a warehouse. She knows somehow that her daughter, Holly, is being held in the building, and she has an overwhelming need to rescue her. But what Willy knows is impossible, for her daughter is dead. On the 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 e-mails that he finally realizes are from people he knew in his youth–people now dead. Like his sister, they want urgently to tell him something. When Willy and Timothy 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. From the Hardcover edition.
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( KOKO. Only four men knew what it meant. Now they must s...)
KOKO. Only four men knew what it meant. Now they must stop it. They are Vietnam vets - a doctor, a lawyer, a working stiff, and a writer. Very different from each other, they are nonetheless linked by a shared history and a single shattering secret. Now, they have been reunited and are about to embark on a quest that will take them from Washington, D.C., to the graveyards and fleshpots of the Far East to the human jungle of New York, hunting someone from the past who has risen from the darkness to kill and kill and kill.
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( On a Midwestern campus in the 1960s, a charismatic guru...)
On a Midwestern campus in the 1960s, a charismatic guru and his young acolytes perform a secret ritual in a local meadow. What happens is a mystery—all that remains is a gruesomely dismembered body and the shattered souls of all who were present. Forty years later, one man seeks to learn about that horrifying night, and to do so he’ll have to force those involved to examine the unspeakable events that have haunted them ever since. Unfolding through their individual stories, A Dark Matter is an electric, chilling, and unpredictable novel that proves Peter Straub to be the master of modern horror.
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(MYSTERY. Tom Pasmore, ten years old, survives a near fat...)
MYSTERY. Tom Pasmore, ten years old, survives a near fatal accident. During his long recovery, he becomes obsessed with an unsolved murder and finds he has clues to solving it that he shouldn’t. Lamont von Heilitz has spent his life solving mysteries, until he wanted to know nothing more of the terror of life and the horror of death. When a new murder disrupts their world of wealth, power, and pleasure, the two must form an unlikely partnership to confront demons from the past and the dark secrets that still haunt the present.
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(Peter Straub’s chilling Blue Rose Trilogy comes to an ast...)
Peter Straub’s chilling Blue Rose Trilogy comes to an astonishing close—secrets unearthed, demons revisited, and mysteries solved. The Throat. Tim Underhill, now an acclaimed novelist, travels back to his hometown of Millhaven, Illinois after he gets a call from John Ransom, an old army buddy. Ransom believes there’s a copycat killer on the loose, mimicking the Blue Rose murders from decades earlier—he thinks his wife could be a potential victim. Underhill seeks out his old friend Tom Pasmore, an aging hermit who has attained minor celebrity as an expert sleuth, to help him investigate. They quickly discover that Millhaven is a town plagued by horrifying secrets and there is a twisted killer on the loose who is far more dangerous than they ever imagined. Expertly tying together the events of Koko and Mystery, The Throat proves Peter Straub to be the master of the suspense novel.
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(One summer night, a boy and his beautiful cousin plunge n...)
One summer night, a boy and his beautiful cousin plunge naked into the moonlit waters of a rural quarry. Twenty years later, the boy, now grown, flees the wreckage of his life and returns to Arden, Wisconsin, in search of everything he has lost. But for Miles Teagarden, the landscape he had known so well has turned eerie and threatening. And the love he shared has become very, very deadly . . .
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(Why had twelve-year-old Jack Sawyer’s mother frantically ...)
Why had twelve-year-old Jack Sawyer’s mother frantically moved the two of them from Rodeo Drive to a New York City apartment to the Alhambra, a fading ocean resort and shuttered amusement park in New Hampshire? Who or what is she running from? She is dying . . . and even young Jack knows she can’t outrun death. But only he can save her—for he has been chosen to search for a prize across an epic landscape of dangers and lies, a realm of innocents and monsters, where everything Jack loves is on the line.
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(Passionate about jazz, the narrator dicovers that one of ...)
Passionate about jazz, the narrator dicovers that one of his greatest heroes, a saxophonist by the name of Pork Pie Hat, is still alive and playing at a club he frequents. Granted an interview by the Hat, the narrator gets a night of extraordinary stories from a man dying of alcoholism.
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(At the unveiling of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D...)
At the unveiling of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., four surviving members of an army platoon are reunited. Their current lives vastly differ in social station and degree of success however, they still can't shake tmemories of the hell they endured together in S.E. Asia; there is one reminder of the past that raises its ugly head
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( From the bestselling author of Ghost Story, Shadowland,...)
From the bestselling author of Ghost Story, Shadowland, and The Talisman, a novella-length rumination on the nature of evil. A Special Place, Peter Straub’s first published novella, will come to stand as one of the author’s most deeply unsettling works of fiction. A rumination on the nature of evil, the story centers on a boy, Keith Hayward, who is drawn by his nature to an irresistible fascination with death and the taking of life. His father’s brother, the good-looking, suave Uncle Till—the infamous ladykiller, who has led a shadowy career as a local celebrity—recognizes his nephew’s innermost nature and gleefully tutors him in art of doing ill without getting caught. Even a cold-blooded sociopath must learn some lessons in survival, in seems, and Uncle Till is only happy to provide a tutorial, in the latest imaginative and disturbing work from one of America's most celebrated horror writers.
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(From early on, American literature has teemed with tales ...)
From early on, American literature has teemed with tales of horror, of hauntings, of terrifying obsessions and gruesome incursions, of the uncanny ways in which ordinary reality can be breached and subverted by the unknown and the irrational. As this pathbreaking two-volume anthology demonstrates, it is a tradition with many unexpected detours and hidden chambers, and one that continues to evolve, finding new forms and new themes as it explores the bad dreams that lurk around the edges-if not in the unacknowledged heart--of the everyday. Peter Straub, one of today's masters of horror and fantasy, offers an authoritative and diverse gathering of stories calculated to unsettle and delight. This first volume surveys a century and a half of American fantastic storytelling, revealing in its 44 stories an array of recurring themes: trance states, sleepwalking, mesmerism, obsession, possession, madness, exotic curses, evil atmospheres. In the tales of Irving, Poe, and Hawthorne, the bright prospects of the New World face an uneasy reckoning with the forces of darkness. In the ghost-haunted Victorian and Edwardian eras, writers including Henry James, Edith Wharton, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Ambrose Bierce explore ever more refined varieties of spectral invasion and disintegrating selfhood. In the twentieth century, with the arrival of the era of the pulps, the fantastic took on more monstrous and horrific forms at the hands of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, and other classic contributors to Weird Tales. Here are works by acknowledged masters such as Stephen Crane, Willa Cather, Conrad Aiken, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, along with surprising discoveries like Ralph Adams Cram's "The Dead Valley," Emma Francis Dawson's "An Itinerant House," and Julian Hawthorne's "Absolute Evil." American Fantastic Tales offers an unforgettable ride through strange and visionary realms. "A stupendous, spellbinding reading experience waiting to be had." -Jonathan Lethem
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Straub, Peter Francis was born on March 2, 1943 in Milwaukee. Son of Gordon Anthony and Elvena (Nilsestuen) Straub.
Bachelor, University Wisconsin, 1965. Master of Arts, Columbia University, New York City, 1966.
English teacher University School, Milwaukee, 1966-1968. Board directors University Wisconsin.
(In his latest soul-chilling novel, bestselling author Pet...)
(Why had twelve-year-old Jack Sawyer’s mother frantically ...)
(From early on, American literature has teemed with tales ...)
(Passionate about jazz, the narrator dicovers that one of ...)
(Peter Straub's Blue Rose trilogy (Koko, Mystery, and The ...)
(Peter Straub’s chilling Blue Rose Trilogy comes to an ast...)
( From the bestselling author of Ghost Story, Shadowland,...)
( On a Midwestern campus in the 1960s, a charismatic guru...)
(One summer night, a boy and his beautiful cousin plunge n...)
(One summer night in 1955, a boy and his cousin plunge nak...)
(The quiet suburban town of Hampstead is threatened by two...)
(With over 10 million copies of his novels in print, Strau...)
(The terrors afflicting the sleepy town of Hampstead, Conn...)
(Anthology of Poems Written from1970 to 1975 by Peter Straub)
(At the unveiling of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D...)
(A woman commits suicide for no apparent reason. A week la...)
(In life, not every sin goes unpunished. GHOST STORY F...)
(A novel filled with ghostly...or not ghostly...horror fic...)
(Book by Straub, Peter)
(First US Thus)
(paperback)
(MYSTERY. Tom Pasmore, ten years old, survives a near fat...)
( KOKO. Only four men knew what it meant. Now they must s...)
Board director Fence, Conjunctions, American Poetry Review, Poets & Writers, Authors League Fund. Member Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association, Horror Writers Association (life. Achievement award, 2006), Century Association.
Married Susan Bitker, August 27, 1966. Children: Benjamin Bitker, Emma Sydney Valli.