The Circle (eBook)

Stephen King calls him "A master of the macabre!"

The Circle
by Bentley Little

About the eBook:
“The shrine. How does it operate? Do you just pray to it or do you have to bring it something or what?”

In this eerie novella by Bentley Little, many strange occurrences unsettle the inhabitants of William Tell Circle:

For Helen, a knock on the door brings an unexpected visitor along with lavish gifts, and it seems all her wishes have been granted…but at what cost?

For young Frank and his friends, a fabled neighborhood shrine may answer their prayers for a girlfriend, just as their older brothers hope the same source will grant them money. But the older boys' improvised ritual turns into something horrible…

For Gil Marotta, a rescue mission to the shrine leads him into a chilling confrontation with the local witch…

The Circle tells the story of a normally quiet community, plunged into the kind of surreal nightmare only Bentley Little can deliver.

"In what might be the greatest opening scene ever, a filthy, loinclothed child bursts into a woman's home, bolts straight for the bathroom, and begins defecating diamonds. This novella from Little gets away with its crimes by pleading insanity, but readers who groove on it... will be telling their friends about this one for ages."
— Booklist, Daniel Kraus

"Recommended for any Little fan and those who enjoy their horror just a little bit different in the approach of the ordinary."
— MonsterLibrarian.com

Bentley Little was born in Arizona a month after his mother attended the world premiere of Psycho. He received his BA in Communications and MA in English and Comparative Literature at California State University Fullerton. His Master's thesis was the novel The Revelation, which was later published and won the Bram Stoker Award in 1991. Since then, he has written many more novels and his work has been translated into seven different languages. Several of his novels have been optioned for film.

His work has appeared in many issues of Cemetery Dance magazine, including Cemetery Dance #64, which was the Bentley Little Special Issue and featured an original interview with him and two of his brand new short stories.

When asked in that issue why he writes horror, he answered: "I write horror because I have to. That's the way my mind works. Those are the ideas that come to me. I've never felt limited by the genre. How could I? Horror fiction offers an author the broadest possible canvas on which to work. I have all of the real-world subjects at my disposal that a mainstream writer does—plus the infinite realm of the supernatural. Creatively, there's nothing else that comes close to this sort of scope, which is why there is nothing I would rather be than a horror writer."