Thrillers & Suspense
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Don't Fear the Reaper (2) (The Indian Lake Trilogy)
December 12th, 2019, Jade returns to the rural lake town of Proofrock the same day as convicted Indigenous serial killer Dark Mill South escapes into town to complete his revenge killings, in this riveting sequel to My Heart Is a Chainsaw from New York Times bestselling author, Stephen Graham Jones.
Four years after her tumultuous senior year, Jade Daniels is released from prison right before Christmas when her conviction is overturned. But life beyond bars takes a dangerous turn as soon as she returns to Proofrock. Convicted Serial Killer, Dark Mill South, seeking revenge for thirty-eight Dakota men hanged in 1862, escapes from his prison transfer due to a blizzard, just outside of Proofrock, Idaho.
Dark Mill South's Reunion Tour began on December 12th, 2019, a Thursday.
Thirty-six hours and twenty bodies later, on Friday the 13th, it would be over.
Don't Fear the Reaper is the page-turning sequel to My Heart Is a Chainsaw from New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones.
Four years after her tumultuous senior year, Jade Daniels is released from prison right before Christmas when her conviction is overturned. But life beyond bars takes a dangerous turn as soon as she returns to Proofrock. Convicted Serial Killer, Dark Mill South, seeking revenge for thirty-eight Dakota men hanged in 1862, escapes from his prison transfer due to a blizzard, just outside of Proofrock, Idaho.
Dark Mill South's Reunion Tour began on December 12th, 2019, a Thursday.
Thirty-six hours and twenty bodies later, on Friday the 13th, it would be over.
Don't Fear the Reaper is the page-turning sequel to My Heart Is a Chainsaw from New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones.
Editorial Reviews
* "Horror fans [will] be blown away by this audacious extravaganza."-Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
* "This extraordinary novel is an essential purchase."-Kirkus, Starred Review
"Stephen's writing is a chainsaw and every sentence in this book drips with blood, every paragraph is clotted with skin, and every period is a bullethole. He makes me feel like an amateur."-Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of The Final Girl Support Group
"A homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre. You don't have to be a slasher fan to read My Heart is a Chainsaw, but I guarantee that you will be after you read it."-Alma Katsu, author of The Deep and The Hunger
"Brutal, beautiful, and unforgettable, My Heart Is a Chainsaw is a visceral ride from start to finish. A bloody love letter to slasher fans, it's everything I never knew I needed in a horror novel."-Gwendolyn Kiste, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens
"Stephen Graham Jones can't miss. My Heart Is A Chainsaw is a painful drama about trauma, mental health, and the heartache of yearning to belong...twisted into a DNA helix with encyclopedic Slasher movie obsession and a frantic, gory whodunnit mystery, with an ending both savage and shocking. Don't say I didn't warn you!" -Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of Ararat and Red Hands
"An easy contender for Best of the Year. A love letter to (and an examination of) both the horror genre and the American West, it left me stunned and applauding."-Brian Keene, World Horror Grandmaster Award and two Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rising and The Damned Highway
"Stephen Graham Jones masterfully navigates the shadowy paths between mystery and horror. An epic entry in the slasher canon."-Laird Barron, author of
* "This extraordinary novel is an essential purchase."-Kirkus, Starred Review
"Stephen's writing is a chainsaw and every sentence in this book drips with blood, every paragraph is clotted with skin, and every period is a bullethole. He makes me feel like an amateur."-Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of The Final Girl Support Group
"A homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre. You don't have to be a slasher fan to read My Heart is a Chainsaw, but I guarantee that you will be after you read it."-Alma Katsu, author of The Deep and The Hunger
"Brutal, beautiful, and unforgettable, My Heart Is a Chainsaw is a visceral ride from start to finish. A bloody love letter to slasher fans, it's everything I never knew I needed in a horror novel."-Gwendolyn Kiste, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens
"Stephen Graham Jones can't miss. My Heart Is A Chainsaw is a painful drama about trauma, mental health, and the heartache of yearning to belong...twisted into a DNA helix with encyclopedic Slasher movie obsession and a frantic, gory whodunnit mystery, with an ending both savage and shocking. Don't say I didn't warn you!" -Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of Ararat and Red Hands
"An easy contender for Best of the Year. A love letter to (and an examination of) both the horror genre and the American West, it left me stunned and applauding."-Brian Keene, World Horror Grandmaster Award and two Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rising and The Damned Highway
"Stephen Graham Jones masterfully navigates the shadowy paths between mystery and horror. An epic entry in the slasher canon."-Laird Barron, author of
Short Excerpt Teaser
1. Motel Hell
MOTEL HELL
It's not really cool to play Lake Witch anymore, but that doesn't mean Toby doesn't remember how to play.
It started the year after the killings, when he was a sophomore, and it wasn't a lifer who came up with it, he's pretty sure, but one of the transplants-in the halls of Henderson High, those are the two main divisions, the question you always start with: "So… you from here, or you'd just get here?" Did you grow up here, or did you move here just to graduate from Henderson High and cash in on that sweet sweet free college?
If it turns out you're from Proofrock, then either you were almost killed in the water watching Jaws, or you knew somebody who was. Your dad, say, in Toby's case. And if you're the one asking that question? Then you're a transplant, obviously.
The reason Toby's pretty sure it was a transplant who came up with the game is that, if you'd lived through that night, then the whole Lake Witch thing isn't just a fun costume.
But it is, too, which is what the transplants, who had no parents dead in those waters, figured out.
The game's simple. Little Galatea Pangborne-the freshman who writes like she's in college-even won an award for her paper on the Lake Witch game, which the new history teacher submitted to some national competition. Good for her. Except part of the celebration was her reading it at assembly. Not just some of it, but all of it.
Her thesis was that this Lake Witch game that had sprung up "more or less on its own" was inevitable, really: teenagers are going to engage in courting rituals, that's hardwired in, is "biology expressing itself through social interaction"-this is how she talks. What makes Proofrock unique, though, is that those same teenagers are also dealing with the grief and trauma of the Independence Day Massacre. So, Galatea said into the mic in her flat academic voice, it's completely natural that these teens' courting rituals and their trauma recovery process became "intertwined." Probably because if life's the Wheel of Fortune, then she can afford all the letters she wants.
What she said did make sense, though, Toby has to admit.
The game is all about getting some, if you're willing to put in the legwork. And, as Galatea said to assembly, the elegance is the game's simplicity: if you're into someone, then you do a two-handed knock on their front door or the side window of their car or wherever you've decided this starts. You have to really machine-gun knock, so you can be sure they get the message, and will definitely be the one to open that door. Also, knocking like that means you're standing there longer than you really want, so you might be about to get caught already.
But, no, you're already running.
And?
Under your black robe, you're either naked or down to next to nothing, as the big important part of the game is you leave your clothes piled in front of the door. Galatea called this the "lure and the promise." Toby just calls it "pretty damn interesting."
Which is to say, just moments ago he got up from the ratty, sweated-up queen bed at the Trail's End Motel at the top end of Main Street, his index finger across his lips to Gwen, and pulled the dull red door in to find a pair of neatly folded yoga pants and, beside them, one of those pricey-thin t-shirts that probably go for ninety bucks down the mountain.
He looked out into the parking lot but it was all just swirling snow and the dull shapes of his Camry and Gwen's mom's truck. Idaho in December, surprise. One in the afternoon and it's already a blizzard.
"Who is it?" Gwen creaked from the bed, holding the sheets up to her throat just like women on television shows do. Toby's always wondered about that.
Another part of the game is that, if you don't give immediate chase, then this particular Lake Witch never knocks on your door again. "Message received," as Galatea put it, because "menacing the object of your affection while disguising your identity is… kind of creepy?"
It was the first laugh she got at assembly that day.
"Message received…" Toby mutters to this Lake Witch, kneeling in his boxer briefs to touch these yoga pants, this expensive shirt, as if his fingertips can feel the body heat from whoever was just wearing them. Who was just standing right here where he is, slithering out of her clothes under cover of a robe-and in minus wh...
MOTEL HELL
It's not really cool to play Lake Witch anymore, but that doesn't mean Toby doesn't remember how to play.
It started the year after the killings, when he was a sophomore, and it wasn't a lifer who came up with it, he's pretty sure, but one of the transplants-in the halls of Henderson High, those are the two main divisions, the question you always start with: "So… you from here, or you'd just get here?" Did you grow up here, or did you move here just to graduate from Henderson High and cash in on that sweet sweet free college?
If it turns out you're from Proofrock, then either you were almost killed in the water watching Jaws, or you knew somebody who was. Your dad, say, in Toby's case. And if you're the one asking that question? Then you're a transplant, obviously.
The reason Toby's pretty sure it was a transplant who came up with the game is that, if you'd lived through that night, then the whole Lake Witch thing isn't just a fun costume.
But it is, too, which is what the transplants, who had no parents dead in those waters, figured out.
The game's simple. Little Galatea Pangborne-the freshman who writes like she's in college-even won an award for her paper on the Lake Witch game, which the new history teacher submitted to some national competition. Good for her. Except part of the celebration was her reading it at assembly. Not just some of it, but all of it.
Her thesis was that this Lake Witch game that had sprung up "more or less on its own" was inevitable, really: teenagers are going to engage in courting rituals, that's hardwired in, is "biology expressing itself through social interaction"-this is how she talks. What makes Proofrock unique, though, is that those same teenagers are also dealing with the grief and trauma of the Independence Day Massacre. So, Galatea said into the mic in her flat academic voice, it's completely natural that these teens' courting rituals and their trauma recovery process became "intertwined." Probably because if life's the Wheel of Fortune, then she can afford all the letters she wants.
What she said did make sense, though, Toby has to admit.
The game is all about getting some, if you're willing to put in the legwork. And, as Galatea said to assembly, the elegance is the game's simplicity: if you're into someone, then you do a two-handed knock on their front door or the side window of their car or wherever you've decided this starts. You have to really machine-gun knock, so you can be sure they get the message, and will definitely be the one to open that door. Also, knocking like that means you're standing there longer than you really want, so you might be about to get caught already.
But, no, you're already running.
And?
Under your black robe, you're either naked or down to next to nothing, as the big important part of the game is you leave your clothes piled in front of the door. Galatea called this the "lure and the promise." Toby just calls it "pretty damn interesting."
Which is to say, just moments ago he got up from the ratty, sweated-up queen bed at the Trail's End Motel at the top end of Main Street, his index finger across his lips to Gwen, and pulled the dull red door in to find a pair of neatly folded yoga pants and, beside them, one of those pricey-thin t-shirts that probably go for ninety bucks down the mountain.
He looked out into the parking lot but it was all just swirling snow and the dull shapes of his Camry and Gwen's mom's truck. Idaho in December, surprise. One in the afternoon and it's already a blizzard.
"Who is it?" Gwen creaked from the bed, holding the sheets up to her throat just like women on television shows do. Toby's always wondered about that.
Another part of the game is that, if you don't give immediate chase, then this particular Lake Witch never knocks on your door again. "Message received," as Galatea put it, because "menacing the object of your affection while disguising your identity is… kind of creepy?"
It was the first laugh she got at assembly that day.
"Message received…" Toby mutters to this Lake Witch, kneeling in his boxer briefs to touch these yoga pants, this expensive shirt, as if his fingertips can feel the body heat from whoever was just wearing them. Who was just standing right here where he is, slithering out of her clothes under cover of a robe-and in minus wh...
