THE NIGHTMARE MAN

T. Kingfisher meets Cassandra Khaw in a chilling horror novel about the fine line between humanity and monstrosity.

Blackwood mansion looms, surrounded by nightmare pines, atop the hill over the small town of New Haven. Ben Bookman, the bestselling novelist and heir to the Blackwood Estate, spent a weekend at the ancestral home to finish writing his latest horror novel. Now, on the eve of the book's release, the terrible story within begins to unfold in real life. Detective Mills arrives at the scene of a gruesome murder: a family butchered and bundled inside cocoons stitched from corn husks, and hung from the rafters of a barn, eerily mirroring the opening of Ben Bookman's latest novel. When another family is killed in a similar manner, Mills is determined to find the link to the book - and the killer - before the story reaches its chilling climax. As the series of "Scarecrow crimes" continues to mirror the book, Ben quickly becomes the prime suspect. He can't remember much from the night he finished writing The Scarecrow, but he knows he wrote it in The Atrium, his grandfather's forbidden room full of numbered books. As he digs deep into Blackwood's history, dysfunctional family dynamics, and the insane asylum his grandfather founded, it becomes clear his grandfather's fondness for nightmares was more than just a bedtime novelty - it was the family business. Ben may have triggered a release of something trapped long ago, and it won't stop with the horrors of his book. He'll have to convince Detective Mills to trust him enough to help contain the manifestation of nightmares before they overtake the town. J. H. Markert is the pen name for writer James Markert, an award-winning novelist, producer screenwriter, husband, and father of two from Louisville, Kentucky, where he was also a tennis pro for 25 years, before hanging up the racquets for the pen in 2020. James Markert is the author of five previous novels, most recently Midnight at the Tuscany Hotel (Thomas Nelson, 2019). While his writing has always had "an undercurrent of menace" (as Booklist put it), Markert has shifted from dark magical realism to more mainstream horror.