Central Kansas Library System

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...

"Abandoned by her mother at age seven, Alexandra Winslow took solace in the mystery stories she read with her devoted father--and soon she was writing them herself, slowly graduating to dark, violent, complex crime stories that reflected skill and imagination far beyond her years. After her father's early death, at fourteen Alex is taken in by the nuns of a local convent, where she finds twenty-six mothers to take the place of the one she lost, and...

"Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours. Paris, May 2002: On Vel' d'Hiv's 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation,...

True crime writer Wylie Lark doesn't mind being snowed in at the isolated farmhouse where she's retreated to write her new book. A cozy fire, complete silence. It would be perfect, if not for the fact that decades earlier, at this very house, two people were murdered in cold blood and a girl disappeared without a trace. As the storm worsens, Wylie finds herself trapped inside the house, haunted by the secrets contained within its walls-haunted by...

He's a reclusive writer whose imagination creates chilling horror novels. She's a down-on-her-luck actress reduced to staging kids' puppet shows. He knows a dozen ways to kill his characters with his bare hands. She knows a dozen ways to kill an audience with laughs. But she's not laughing now. Annie Hewitt has arrived on Peregrine Island in the middle of a snowstorm and at the end of her resources. She's broke, dispirited, but not quite ready to...

Jack Torrance, his wife Wendy, and their young son Danny move into the Overlook Hotel, where Jack has been hired as the winter caretaker. Cut off from civilization for months, Jack hopes to battle alcoholism and uncontrolled rage while writing a play. Evil forces residing in the Overlook--which has a long and violent history--covet young Danny for his precognitive powers and exploit Jack’s weaknesses to try to claim the boy.

"Sabrina Brooks is a wildly successful bestselling author of gripping thrillers. Unlike her fictional characters, Sabrina lives a quiet life in the Berkshires with her two beloved dogs. But behind this peaceful exterior is a dark, painful past. As a child raised by an emotionally distant father, Sabrina rarely felt love. And as an adult, her marriage twisted into an abusive relationship from which she had to escape. Sabrina channeled that fear into...

A successful self-help author, recovering from a devastating car accident, finds her life spiraling dangerously out of control in the face of a caterer's murder and her husband's ominous secrets. Bryn Harper, an accomplished self-help author, is still recovering from a devastating car accident that has left her haunted by recurring, smoke-filled nightmares. She can't shake the feeling her dreams contain a warning. Her husband Guy couldn't be more...

"In 1937, twenty-eight-year-old Martha Gellhorn travels alone to Madrid to report on the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War and becomes drawn to the stories of ordinary people caught in the devastating conflict. It's the adventure she's been looking for and her chance to prove herself a worthy journalist in a field dominated by men. But she also finds herself unexpectedly--and uncontrollably--falling in love with Hemingway, a man on his way to becoming...

"Call Ava romantic, but she thinks love should be found in the real world, not on apps that filter men by height, job, or astrological sign. She believes in feelings, not algorithms. So after a recent breakup and dating app debacle, she decides to put love on hold and escapes to a remote writers' retreat in coastal Italy. She's determined to finish writing the novel she's been fantasizing about, even though it means leaving her close-knit group of...