Dark Harvest
- Author: Norman Partridge
- Artist: John Picacio
- Page Count: 172
- Pub. Date: October 2006
- ISBN: 1-58767-147-6
- Status: Out of Print
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Dark Harvest
by Norman Partridge
About the Book:
A Midwestern town. You know its name. You were born there.
It's Halloween night, 1963. Every boy between the ages of sixteen and nineteen has been locked up for the last five days. Now, starving and wild, they're hitting the streets armed with baseball bats, pitchforks, and two-by-fours studded with nails.
They're ready to go nose-to-nose with a legend. He's the reaper that grows in a cornfield, the merciless trick with a heart made of treats, the butchering nightmare with a Jack O' Lantern face. He's the October Boy, and he visits your town every Halloween, ready to run a gauntlet of young men anxious to carve his beating candy heart from his chest.
Mitch Crenshaw and his gang burn rubber in a street rod with Gorgon headlights…. Pete McCormick's on the move with a stolen .45… and a hunted girl is out there, too, making her break on the one night of the year when no rules apply. You're running with them, threading your own path through danger and moonlight, shadowing a sadistic cop and packs of brutal teenagers who'll attack anyone who gets in their way. Because this is your town. You understand its secrets, and you want a ringside seat on the night it all comes tumbling down.
Norman Partridge returns to Cemetery Dance with a high-octane tale of fantastic suspense. Startlingly original in style and execution, Dark Harvest is sure to be the horror event this Halloween season. Don't miss it!
Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge We've received some extremely exciting news for Norman Partridge fans! His new Cemetery Dance book, Dark Harvest, has been selected as one of the "Best Books of the Year" by Publishers Weekly! In case you're not familiar with PW's "Best of the Year" selections, this is a very rare achievement, especially for a genre title. In fact, Norman's book was one of just FIVE Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror titles they selected, and it was the ONLY horror title on the list! As Publishers Weekly states: "Every week some 1,000 books come into our offices, and every week more than a hundred of those go back out again to our reviewers all over the country... This is our chance to revisit them all and audaciously proclaim a small portion of them 'best.'" |
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At
the start of this mesmerizing new fantasy from Partridge (Mr. Fox and Other
Feral Tales), it's Halloween night in 1963 in Anytown, U.S.A., and the
local teenage boys are ramping up for the annual hunt for the October Boy, a
pumpkin-headed being cultivated by the town fathers to run the gauntlet each
All Hallows' Eve. The boy who brings him down before he makes it to the local
church wins a highly coveted ticket out of town and, as most believe, liberation
from the stultifying ennui of small-town life that has crushed all ambition
and dreams out of the adults. Pete McCormack is among the most determined boys
on the hunt, but this evening he will learn horrifying truths about his town's
tradition and the terrible price he must pay for his manhood. Partridge has
always had a knack for sifting deeper significance from period pop culture,
but here he brilliantly distills a convincing male identity myth from teen rebel
drive-in flicks, garish comic book horrors, hard-boiled crime pulps and other
bits of lowbrow Americana. Whether read as potent dark fantasy or a modern coming-of-age
parable, this is contemporary American writing at its finest."
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Partridge is at his best when he combines graphic terror with teenage
angst... No one evokes the nostalgia of growing up in the 1960s better... If
you're looking for a scary Halloween tale, with lots of blood and gore—and
candy—you've come to the right place."
— Rocky Mountain News
"Dark Harvest thrills with staccato scenes of action, ideal for
a horror novel. Using a quick, lean prose reminiscent of the finest Gold Medal-era
fiction and, at the same time, as fresh as a Quentin Tarantino film, Partridge
packs more into this slim volume than most authors do in a bloated 600-page
epic."
— The Austin Chronicle
Norman Partridge's fiction includes horror, suspense, and the fantastic—"sometimes all in one story" says his friend Joe Lansdale. Partridge's novels include the Jack Baddalach mysteries Saguaro Riptide and The Ten-Ounce Siesta, plus The Crow: Wicked Prayer, which was adapted for film. His novel Dark Harvest was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the 100 Best Books of 2006. Partridge's compact, thrill-a-minute style has been praised by Stephen King and Peter Straub, and his collections and stories have received both the Bram Stoker and IHG awards. You can find him on the web at www.normanpartridge.com and www.americanfrankenstein.blogspot.com.
Published in two states:
• Hardcover Limited Edition of 2,000 signed copies bound in full-cloth and Smyth sewn ($40)
• Traycased Hardcover Lettered Edition of 26 signed and lettered copies bound in
leather and Smyth sewn with a satin ribbon page marker ($175)
Excerpt
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