In his latest soul-chilling novel, bestselling author Peter Straub tells of a famous childrens 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 mindagain. 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 youthpeople now dead. Like his sister, they want urgently to tell him something. When Willy and Timothy meet, the frightening parallels between Willys tragic loss and the story in Tims manuscript suggest that they must join forces to confront the evils surrounding them.
The Washington Post - Christopher Rice
Somewhere around the hundredth page, In the Night Room becomes the kind of fast-paced, deftly plotted novel that defies critical synopsis, lest the reader's experience of it be spoiled. What follows is a riveting and elegiac journey, as Underhill and Willy travel to visit the scenes of those crimes that served as the source material for his novel, which has evoked the wrath of a vengeful spirit whose brief, bone-chilling appearances are rendered vividly and precisely. In the process, Straub takes readers to a place where fact and fiction are blended by flows of grief. The result is not only a powerful and arresting foray into the dark fantastic, but also a novel that manages to provide a deeply personal glimpse into its author's psyche without sacrificing narrative and suspense.