Thomas Tryon – författare

A family flees the crime-ridden city—and finds something worse—in “a brilliantly imagined horror story” by the New York Times–bestselling author (The Boston Globe). After watching his asthmatic daughter suffer in the foul city air, Theodore Constantine decides to get back to the land. When he and his wife search New England for the perfect nineteenth-century home, they find no township more charming, no countryside more idyllic than the farming village of Cornwall Coombe. Here they begin a new life: simple, pure, close to nature—and ultimately more terrifying than Manhattan’s darkest alley.   When the Constantines win the friendship of the town matriarch, the mysterious Widow Fortune, they are invited to join the ancient festival of Harvest Home, a ceremony whose quaintness disguises dark intentions. In this bucolic hamlet, where bootleggers work by moonlight and all of the villagers seem to share the same last name, the past is more present than outsiders can fathom—and something far more sinister than the annual harvest is about to rise out of the earth.   Credited as the inspiration for Stephen King’s Children of the Corn, Thomas Tryon’s chilling novel was ahead of its time when first published, and continues to provoke abject terror in readers.    

The interlocking lives of five Hollywood leading ladies spawn “tragedies, dark doings, jealousies, murder, passion on the grand scale” (Chicago Tribune).  Charlie Caine has been to too many Hollywood funerals. The studio system is long gone, and its stars—some forgotten, some preserved for display on a late-night show—are beginning to pass on, as well. Only a few turn out for the final performance of Babe Austrian, a peroxide-blond beauty whose red-hot talkies changed the way America thought about sex. As he gazes into her coffin, Caine remembers Babe as she was: a dynamite beauty with secrets that could have burned Hollywood to the ground. In Babe and four other interlocking novellas, Caine recalls the leading ladies of long-lost Hollywood: Belinda, whose daughter was as cruel as she was lovely; Claire, who would do anything to stay in the public eye; April, fragile, beautiful, and mad; and Maude, Hollywood’s most respected matron, whose happy marriage had a lie at its heart. Charlie Caine knows where cinema’s bodies are buried, and he’s anxious to start digging. 

A young man becomes transfixed by a beautiful widow with a shadowy pastIn Pequot Landing, there are two sights to see: the largest elm in America, which dominates the stately old village green, and the house of Lady Harleigh. When the Great War ended, she was the most beautiful bride in the village, and though she was widowed soon after, mourning dampened neither her beauty nor her spirits. By the time the Great Depression rolls around, she is the unchallenged center of Pequot society—lovely and energetic, but subject to bouts of grim melancholy that hint at something dark beneath her surface.Woody is eight years old when he first notices the Lady, and her glittering elegance captures his heart. He spends his boyhood deeply in love with the mysterious widow, obsessed with the sadness that lies at her core. As he gets closer to her, he finds that Lady Harleigh is haunted—not just by grief, but by a scandalous secret that, if revealed, could change Pequot Landing forever.

Though the greats of Hollywood may fade, their secrets live on foreverFedora is dead, and movies will never be the same. A star since the early days of Hollywood, she survived the business for an unprecedented four decades before retiring to Crete. As the years wore on and her costars turned wrinkled and worn, Fedora’s perfect features never faded. Now that she has finally passed, the secret to her longevity will be told—a shocking revelation that will raise her to the level of myth.These four novellas tell the story of Fedora and three of her costars in 1955’s infamous The Miracle of Santa Cristi. Alongside the ageless beauty are William Marsh, whose days as a leading man are numbered; Bobbitt, a former child star still trading on his boyish good looks; and Lorna, a dim bulb who’s too sexy for her own good. When the film was shot, they were headed in different directions, but all ended up in the same place: forgotten, loathed, and unlamented. 

“A slick Manhattan spin on the story of the sorcerer’s apprentice” from the New York Times–bestselling author of the horror classic The Other (Chicago Tribune).   Though he bills himself as the Greatest Magician in the World, Michael Hawke is painfully aware that he’s nothing more than a sidewalk. He plies his trade outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, entrancing passing crowds with feats of conjuring and sleight of hand. One afternoon, he plays a trick on a shabbily dressed man whose beard is twisted and whose glass eye gives him a sinister leer. Offended, the man responds with magic of his own, casting a spell that causes Michael to hop like a frog, maniacally splashing in the fountain until the police have to haul him out.   When he recovers from this trance, Michael knows that he has encountered a true magician, one whose secrets he will give anything to understand. But this is black magic, mysterious and deadly, and pursuing it will mean a confrontation with an evil older than civilization itself.

From horror to Hollywood, three haunting novels from the New York Times–bestselling author of Crowned Heads and The Other.  Harvest Home: After escaping New York City for the idyllic New England village of Cornwall Coombe, the Constantine family wins the friendship of the town matriarch, the mysterious Widow Fortune, who invites them to join the ancient festival of Harvest Home. But something far more sinister than the annual harvest is about to rise out of the earth in this New York Times bestseller.   “[A] brilliantly imagined horror story.” —The Boston Globe  Lady: In the town of Pequot Landing during the Great Depression, a young man becomes transfixed by a beautiful, mysterious widow. As Woody gets closer to her, he finds that Lady Harleigh is haunted—not just by grief, but by a scandalous secret that, if revealed, could change Pequot Landing forever. Lady is a New York Times bestseller.   “A spellbinder with a twisted ending . . . enchanting entertainment. You can’t put it down.” —The Des Moines Register  All That Glitters: In five interlocking novellas, cynical writer Charlie Caine recalls the leading ladies of long-lost Hollywood: Babe, a red-hot, peroxide-blond beauty with secrets that could have burned Tinseltown to the ground; Belinda, whose daughter was as cruel as she was lovely; Claire, who would do anything to stay in the public eye; April, fragile, beautiful, and mad; and Maude, Hollywood’s most respected matron, whose happy marriage had a lie at its heart.   “One unforgettable novel with the power to shock . . . very believable . . . [readers] will find pleasure in guessing which real-life actresses Tryon has used as models.” —The Washington Post

Thomas Tryon, 1634 – 1703, was an English merchant, author of popular self-help books, and early advocate of vegetarianism.Of Cleanness in Meats and Drinks. Of the Excellency of Good Airs, and of the contrary. Of the Benefits of Clean Sweet Beds, and of the Inconveniences of Feather-Beds. What Matter it is that does occasion the Generation of that pernicious Vermin called Bugs, that so many Hundreds in this City, and other great Towns, are infested with; more especially in Holland, Italy, New-England, Barbadoes, Jamaica, and in many other Places. That they are never bred but where Beds are: And that their being generated from Wooden Bedsteads, or from Hogs Hair in the Plaisterings of the Walls, is a meer Story, promoted inconsiderately by Persons mistaken in the Productions of Nature: Also, How all such Persons as are troubled with them may be cured without using Medicines, and Directions how to avoid ever having them again.