A telephone ringing in the dead of night signals the beginning of a journey into fear as MaryAnne Carpenter hears the shocking news: her friends the Wilkensons are suddenly, inexplicably dead, their only child, MaryAnne's godchild, abruptly orphaned and dependent on her.

The children were waiting. Waiting for centuries. Waiting for someone to hear their cries. Now nine-year-old Christie Lyons has come to live in the house on the hill - the house where no children have lived for 50 years. Now little Christie will sleep in the old-fashioned nursery on the third floor. Now Christie's terror will begin... When the Wind Blows the children must die!

Cassie Winslow is 16. She has just lost her mother in a terrible accident. Now, lonely and frightened, she has come to live with the father she barely knows and his new family in tiny False Harbor on Cape Cod. For Cassie, the strange, unsettling dreams that come to her suddenly in the dead of night are merely the beginning. Very soon, Cassie Winslow will come to know the terrifying powers that are her gift. And in the village of False Harbor, nothing will ever be the same.

Italy, 1252. Inquisition. Accusation. Fear. Torture. The guilty and the innocent dying for sins real and imagined, in the flames of the burning stake.... Neilsville, 1978. Peter Balsam has come to this sleepy desert town to teach its youth, and finds a mystery of mounting horror. Something is happening to the young girls of St. Francis Xavier High School - something evil. In bloodlet and terror a suicide contagion has swept the town...while a dark order of its holy men enacts a secret medieval ritual.

Brilliant summers amid golden fields. Killing winters of razorlike cold. A peaceful, neighborly village, darkened by legends of death? Who is Nathaniel? For 100 years, the people of Prairie Bend have whispered the name in wonder and fear. Some say he is simply a folk tale - a legend created to frighten children on cold winter nights. Some swear he is a terrifying spirit returned to avenge the past. And soon...very soon...some will come to believe that Nathaniel lives still - darkly, horrifyingly real. Nathaniel.

One hundred years ago in Port Arbello a pretty little girl began to scream. And struggle. And die. No one heard. No one saw. Just one man whose guilty heart burst in pain as he dashed himself to death in the sea. Now something peculiar is happening in Port Arbello. The children are disappearing, one by one. An evil history is repeating itself. And one strange, terrified child has ended her silence with a scream that began 100 years ago.

Lush and deceptively tranquil, with its pristine beaches and blossoming vegetation, the island basks in splendid isolation off the South Carolina coast. Here, where sudden storms unleash the murderous rage of wind and sea, stands the Devereaux mansion, a once-great plantation house now crumbling amid ancient oaks dripping with Spanish moss. Here, Marguerite Devereaux, 50 and childless, has cast off her dreams to care for her aged, demanding mother.

Something is happening to the children of Eastbury, Massachusetts.... Something that causes healthy babies to turn cold in their cribs. Something that strikes at the heart of every parent's darkest fears. Something unexplained that is taking the children, one by one.

Thirteen-year-old Angel Sullivan falls in love with her family's new home - the house that stands at Black Creek Crossing in the small town of Roundtree, Massachusetts. But the idyll is soon shattered as Angel learns a shocking secret about the house.

Every parent's nightmare becomes a reality for Kara Marshall when her daughter, Lindsay, vanishes from her bedroom during the night. The police suspect that the girl is just another moody teenage runaway, angry over leaving behind her school and friends because her family is moving. But Lindsay's recent eerie claim - that someone invaded her room when the house was opened to prospective buyers - drives Kara to fear the worst.

It has waited seven years for someone to come back to the rambling lakeside house called Pinecrest, which has stood empty since its last owner went missing. For upscale Chicago couple Dan and Merrill Brewster, the old midwestern manse is an ideal retreat, and for their kids, Eric and Marci, it's the perfect place to spend a lazy summer exploring.

Another terrifying, classic horror novel from best-selling author John Saul. An insidious madman haunts the peaceful town of Borrego, New Mexico. His goal is singular, as is the focus of his hate and rage. The teenagers of the town seem to have gone too far, and now he will strike back - while they sleep and even during their waking hours - and silence them forever.

Karen Spellman is leaving Los Angeles behind, packing up her life and her daughters, and returning to her hometown to marry her high school sweetheart. In the countryside of her childhood, she is looking forward to a fresh start. But her life quickly turns dark and a malevolent force beyond her control threatens to take her daughters from her and ruin her dreams of a new life. Little does anyone know that an evil thought to be long dead has only been lying in wait, quietly anticipating the day when it will finally be able to satisfy its vengeful desires.

They call it the Academy: a secluded, cliff-top mansion overlooking the rugged Pacific coast. It's a school for children gifted - or cursed - with extraordinary minds, children soon to come under the influence of an intelligence even more brilliant than their own - and unspeakably evil.

For more than three decades John Saul has haunted the New York Times best seller list - and listeners imaginations - with his chilling tales of psychological suspense and supernatural horror. His instinct for striking the deepest chords of fear in our hearts and minds is unerring, and his gift for steering a tale from the light of day into the darkest depths of nightmare is at its harrowing best in House of Reckoning.

The day that the iron doors of the old mill in Westover, Massachusetts, closed forever is a day that still haunts the sleepy town’s residents. On that fateful day 100 years ago, 11 people died in a fearsome fire, and since then, no one has dared to revisit the mill or the dark secrets locked inside it. Now, a member of the once-powerful Sturgess family has aspirations to reopen the mill. Little does Philip Sturgess know that by unlocking the padlock he is also unlocking horrible secrets from the past. There are forces at work that will do their best to see the mill doors stay tightly closed.

The children were waiting. Waiting for centuries. Waiting for someone to hear their cries. Now nine-year-old Christie Lyons has come to live in the house on the hill - the house where no children have lived for 50 years. Now little Christie will sleep in the old-fashioned nursery on the third floor. Now Christie's terror will begin... When the Wind Blows the children must die!

Laura Brandon's promise to her dying father was simple: to visit an elderly woman she'd never heard of before. A woman who remembers nothing-except the distant past. Visiting Sarah Tolley seemed a small enough sacrifice to make. But Laura's promise results in another death: her husband's. And after their five-year-old daughter, Emma, witnesses her father's suicide, Emma refuses to talk about it - to talk at all.Frantic and guilt ridden, Laura contacts the only person who may be able to help.

If Howard Morton and Freddie the Frog Killer were trying to hold you down so that Mary Lou Hutton could kiss you, you might run as fast as Jeremy Thatcher did the day he stumbled into Mr. Elives' Magic Shop. And if you stumbled into that strange shop, you, too, might be asked to make a choice. What would you buy? The Chinese rings? The Skull of Truth? Or the dragon's egg?

In the idyllic small town of Tucker, Vermont, life flows at a rhythmic pace for pediatrician Paige Pfeiffer. But when Mara O'Neill, her best friend and medical partner, inexplicably kills herself, Paige's comfortable world is suddenly shattered. Temporarily caring for Mara's newly adopted baby daughter while she comes to grips with her grief, Paige clings to the hope that, in time, her orderly life will return.

Years and distance kept the memories at bay. But back at home, the past is ready and waiting to haunt her... Eighteen years have passed since Joy's childhood best friend, Jenny, met her death in a tragic car accident just a few days after their senior prom. A broken Joy left their small Kentucky hometown shortly after - determined never to come back. But when her father's illness forces her to return, she realizes that neither time nor distance have truly healed her troubled soul.

Rachel Weaver Mason is finally going home to Deer Run, the Amish community she left behind so many years ago. Recently widowed, she wants desperately to create a haven for herself and her young daughter. But the community, including Rachel's family, is anything but welcoming. The only person happy to see her is her teenage brother, Benjamin, and he's protecting a dark secret that endangers them all.

Some cryptic words wake college student Jess Ballard from a terrifying dream into an even more terrifying reality. Jess’ life has never been what anyone would call easy; doing damage control in the wake of your nomadic, alcoholic mother doesn't exactly make for a storybook childhood. But now, her world has fallen apart just when it should be coming together: her mother gone—dead under mysterious circumstances; her life uprooted to stay with estranged relatives she’s never met; and there’s something odd about some of the people she’s been meeting at school: They’re dead.

Joanna Flynn was lucky to be alive. But when the doctors told her she would suffer no lasting effects from the near-fatal accident, they were wrong. For that night the nightmares about Caroline began. As the dreams become more torturous, Joanna sets out to investigate this mysterious woman - a journey that takes her 3,000 miles from home to a picturesque town where everybody seems to have a conflicting opinion of the woman who haunts her dreams.

On an ordinary day, at an air show like that in any small town across the country, a plane crashes into a crowd of spectators, killing and injuring dozens. But when the dust clears, a thirteen-year-old girl named Ava is found huddled beneath a pocket of rubble with her best friend, Wash. He is injured and bleeding, and when Ava places her hands over him, his wounds miraculously disappear. Ava has a unique gift: she can heal others of their physical ailments.

Welcome to Lily Dale, New York...a sleepy summer resort, home to a population of psychics, and the place where Julia Garrity and Kristin Shuttleworth formed a fast friendship broken only by death. Ten Summer Street is no ordinary house. It was there, 15 years ago, that Kristin saw something on a Halloween night that would haunt her until the end of her days. Since then, Julia has watched both Kristin and her mother fall prey to whomever - or whatever - lurks there.

When a car accident leaves photographer Burke Crenshaw in need of temporary full-time care, he finds himself back in the one place no forty-year-old chooses to be--his childhood bedroom. There, in the Vermont home where he grew up, Burke begins the long process of recuperation, and watches as his widowed father finds happiness in a new relationship that's a constant reminder of everything Burke wants and lacks. Exploring local history, Burke discovers an intriguing series of letters from a Civil War soldier to his fianc.

When Jessica marries David, he is everything she wants in a family man: brilliant, attentive, ever youthful. Yet she still feels something about him is just out of reach. Soon, as people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago, he and other members of an Ethiopian sect traded their humanity so they would never die, a secret he must protect at any cost.

Seventeen-year-old Lorelei Patio is the adopted daughter of 200-year-old vampire Sergio Patio. She never realized why her family has had to move so often or why she is not permitted to get too friendly with other young people. In fact, except for one shocking moment that seemed more like a dream, Lorelei never fully realized who and what her father was nor what her sisters were brought up to do for him. But one day, that all changed.

When Wendy Everly was six-years-old, her mother was convinced she was a monster and tried to kill her. It isn't until 11 years later that Wendy discovers her mother might have been right. With the help of Finn Holmes, Wendy finds herself in a world she never knew existed - a world both beautiful and frightening, and Wendy's not sure she wants to be a part of it.

Brilliant summers amid golden fields. Killing winters of razorlike cold. A peaceful, neighborly village, darkened by legends of death? Who is Nathaniel? For 100 years, the people of Prairie Bend have whispered the name in wonder and fear. Some say he is simply a folk tale - a legend created to frighten children on cold winter nights. Some swear he is a terrifying spirit returned to avenge the past. And soon...very soon...some will come to believe that Nathaniel lives still - darkly, horrifyingly real. Nathaniel.

One hundred years ago in Port Arbello a pretty little girl began to scream. And struggle. And die. No one heard. No one saw. Just one man whose guilty heart burst in pain as he dashed himself to death in the sea. Now something peculiar is happening in Port Arbello. The children are disappearing, one by one. An evil history is repeating itself. And one strange, terrified child has ended her silence with a scream that began 100 years ago.

Lush and deceptively tranquil, with its pristine beaches and blossoming vegetation, the island basks in splendid isolation off the South Carolina coast. Here, where sudden storms unleash the murderous rage of wind and sea, stands the Devereaux mansion, a once-great plantation house now crumbling amid ancient oaks dripping with Spanish moss. Here, Marguerite Devereaux, 50 and childless, has cast off her dreams to care for her aged, demanding mother.

Something is happening to the children of Eastbury, Massachusetts.... Something that causes healthy babies to turn cold in their cribs. Something that strikes at the heart of every parent's darkest fears. Something unexplained that is taking the children, one by one.

They call it the Academy: a secluded, cliff-top mansion overlooking the rugged Pacific coast. It's a school for children gifted - or cursed - with extraordinary minds, children soon to come under the influence of an intelligence even more brilliant than their own - and unspeakably evil.

Italy, 1252. Inquisition. Accusation. Fear. Torture. The guilty and the innocent dying for sins real and imagined, in the flames of the burning stake.... Neilsville, 1978. Peter Balsam has come to this sleepy desert town to teach its youth, and finds a mystery of mounting horror. Something is happening to the young girls of St. Francis Xavier High School - something evil. In bloodlet and terror a suicide contagion has swept the town...while a dark order of its holy men enacts a secret medieval ritual.

Thirteen-year-old Angel Sullivan falls in love with her family's new home - the house that stands at Black Creek Crossing in the small town of Roundtree, Massachusetts. But the idyll is soon shattered as Angel learns a shocking secret about the house.

Every parent's nightmare becomes a reality for Kara Marshall when her daughter, Lindsay, vanishes from her bedroom during the night. The police suspect that the girl is just another moody teenage runaway, angry over leaving behind her school and friends because her family is moving. But Lindsay's recent eerie claim - that someone invaded her room when the house was opened to prospective buyers - drives Kara to fear the worst.

The children were waiting. Waiting for centuries. Waiting for someone to hear their cries. Now nine-year-old Christie Lyons has come to live in the house on the hill - the house where no children have lived for 50 years. Now little Christie will sleep in the old-fashioned nursery on the third floor. Now Christie's terror will begin... When the Wind Blows the children must die!

The small town of Villejeune, Florida, lies far enough from the inquisitive eyes of strangers and even the reaches of the law that a community with its own customs, rituals, and deadly rites has grown there. In order to start fresh after a failed job prospect and unexpected emotional trauma for their teenage daughter, Ted and Mary Anderson have returned home to Villejeune, unaware of the growing malevolence there. Soon, they are thrust into a nightmare as their sweet but troubled daughter, Kelly, is pulled into the darkness that seems to have consumed the town.

Karen Spellman is leaving Los Angeles behind, packing up her life and her daughters, and returning to her hometown to marry her high school sweetheart. In the countryside of her childhood, she is looking forward to a fresh start. But her life quickly turns dark and a malevolent force beyond her control threatens to take her daughters from her and ruin her dreams of a new life. Little does anyone know that an evil thought to be long dead has only been lying in wait, quietly anticipating the day when it will finally be able to satisfy its vengeful desires.

Caroline Evans, a recently widowed mother of two, thinks things have finally fallen into place when she meets the charismatic Anthony Fleming. They are quickly married, and she and her two children move into his luxury apartment in the legendary Rockwell on Central Park West. Caroline dismisses the oddities of their new neighbors as pleasant eccentricities - until things begin to change.