| Book Summaries of Douglas Clegg novels
The Lady of Serpents
Hailed as the prophesied messiah of the vampyre, Aleric seemed destined
for glory-until, like many of his brethren, he was captured by the
sorceress Enora. Imprisoned, he is now forced to fight in the arena for
her amusement.
To end Enora's reign of terror, Aleric must escape and find the alchemist
behind her power, though that may mean unleashing Pythia, the Lady of
Serpents-Aleric's old enemy, the seductress who ended his mortal life. For
she alone may hold the key to the survival not only of the vampyres, but
also all of humankind.
Publishers Weekly review:
"This second installment in Clegg's unfolding Vampyricon epic brims with
the same dazzling invention and creative mythography as its predecessor,
The Priest of Blood (2005). Aleric, the Breton falconer, returns as heir
apparent to the vampire throne, but in a world vastly different since he
breached the Veil separating the ordinary world from the world of the
vampire myth stream...Clegg's rich descriptions, ingenious variations on
vampire lore and intriguing speculations on a secret history underlying
our own make this an exuberantly imagined dark fantasy."
The Priest of Blood
From Douglas Clegg, award-winning author of Afterlife and The Hour Before
Dark, comes his first-ever fantasy novel, dealing with the dark edge of a
fantastic medieval world. The Priest of Blood is the first novel of The
Vampyricon, a saga of sword and sorcery -- and vampyres.
Born the son of a woman thought to be a witch, Aleric does not know who
fathered him. From his grandfather he learned the skill that will change
his life. With that training -- and his own ability to
communicate with the great predator birds of the forest -- Aleric is taken
into service by the Baron and put in charge of his falcons.
Now called Falconer, he rises fast and far. Still, to those at court, he
remains the bastard son of a peasant whore. And when his forbidden love
for the Baron's daughter is discovered, his punishment is swift and
severe. Beaten and brutalized, he is forcibly conscripted as a soldier and
banished to the Holy Land to fight the Saracen infidels. Amidst the horror
and chaos of the ongoing struggle, he becomes a mighty warrior -- and a
man without faith or conscience.
Then, in an ancient ruined city, he finds a new love. She calls herself
Pythia -- and in her passionate, bloody embrace, he also finds his
destiny...
Set in a medieval world of ancient forests and buried kingdoms, of gods
and monsters, of love that crosses centuries, and vengeance beyond
lifetimes, The Priest of Blood is the tale of Aleric, Falconer, of his
quest for his beloved, and for the legendary priest-king within whose tomb
the secrets of the ancient, immortal race of vampyres reside.
Mordred, Bastard Son by Douglas Clegg
Stoker Award-winning novelist Douglas Clegg (Afterlife, The Hour Before
Dark, and over a dozen other best-selling novels of contemporary horror)
sets his rich imagination to the task of reinventing Arthurian legend, and
the results are spectacular.
A young monk becomes enthralled by the story a mysterious prisoner
begins to tell as he tends to his wounds. The prisoner is Mordred, bastard
son of King Arthur Pendragon and his half sister Morgan Le Fay, who has
been arrested for murder and treason. His story is one of ambition, power,
and betrayal, and it will change the monk's life forever.
In Clegg's ambitious reimagining of Camelot, Mordred, the traditional
villain of Arthurian legend, emerges as a heroic and romantic figure, torn
between his powerful mother's desire for revenge against Arthur, his own
conflicted feelings toward the father who betrayed him, and his passionate
love affair with a knight in King Arthur's court: Lancelot. The first of a
trilogy, Mordred, Bastard Son sets the stage for an epic adventure
of love, friendship, magic, war, and betrayal, a fresh, dazzling chapter
in the Arthurian canon.
The Attraction
Plus bonus novella, "The Necromancer" (Two novellas in one paperback!)
by Douglas Clegg
The signs all along the desert highway read “Come See the Mystery!” But
some mysteries should remain buried forever. Charlie Goodrow, owner of the
Brake Down Palace Gas and Sundries, tells anyone who stops for a fill-up
about the mysterious attraction in back. It’s the mummified remains of an
ancient legendary flesh-scraper, whose job had been to scrape the flesh
off the bones of human sacrifices…
When a car filled with teenagers gets a flat tire out in the middle of the
Arizona heat, the kids figure they have time to check out the Mystery.
Behind curtains, in a glass case, lies a small, withered
corpse with very long fingernails. Above it, tacked on the wall, is a
sign: “Do Not Touch. Do Not Feed.” But it has to be a hoax, right? How
could the kids know that feeding the Mystery will be the worst mistake of
their lives? How could they know that the flesh-scraper is hungry for
flesh?
The Abandoned (Harrow novel #4)
by Douglas Clegg
There is a dark and isolated mansion, boarded-up and avoided, on a hill
just beyond the town of Watch Point in New York’s Hudson Valley. It has
been abandoned too long and fallen into disrepair. It is called
Harrow and it does not like to be ignored.
But a new caretaker has come to
Harrow. He is fixing up the rooms and preparing the house for visitors….
What’s been trapped inside the house has begun leaking like
a poison into the village itself. A teenage girl sleeps too much, but when
she awakens her nightmares will break loose. A little boy faces the
ultimate fear when the house calls to him. A young woman must
face the terror in her past to keep Harrow from destroying everything she
loves.
And somewhere within the house a demented child waits with teeth
like knives.
Nightmare House (Harrow novel #1)
by Douglas Clegg
There are places that hold in the traces of evil, houses that become
legendary for the mysteries and secrets within their walls. Harrow is one
such house. Psychic manifestations, poltergeist activity,
hallucinations, and other residue of terror have all been documented in
Harrow. It has been called Nightmare House. It is a nest for the restless
spirits of the dead.
When Ethan Gravesend arrives to inherit Harrow, he does not suspect the horror that awaits him -- the
nightmare of the woman trapped within the walls of the house, or the
endless crying of an unseen child. Also includes the bonus novella Purity!
The Hour Before Dark
by Douglas Clegg
When Nemo Raglan's father is murdered in one of the most vicious killings
of recent years, Nemo must return to the New England island he thought he
had escaped for good, Burnley Island. But this murder was no crime of
human ferocity.
What butchered Nemo's father may in fact be something far more
terrifying -- something Nemo and his younger brother and sister have known
since they were children.
As Nemo unravels the mysteries of his past and a terrible night of his
childhood, he witnesses something unimaginable...and sees the true face of
evil...while Burnley Island comes to know the unspeakable horror that
grows in the darkness.
The Halloween Man
by Douglas Clegg
The New England coastal town of Stonehaven had a history of nightmares and
dark secrets. But when Stony Crawford fell in love with beautiful Lourdes
Maria Castillo, he became the unwitting pawn in a game of horror and
darkness, a game that had been played since long before his birth. The
Halloween Man walks when the screaming begins, and only Stony Crawford
holds the key to the chilling mystery of Stonehaven, and to the power of
the unspeakable creature trapped within a summer mansion.
The Infinite (Harrow novel #3)
by Douglas Clegg
Harrow is haunted, they say. The mansion is a place of tragedy and
nightmares, evil and insanity. First it was a madman's fortress; then it
became a school. Now it lies empty. But an obsessed woman and a ghost
hunter want to bring the house back to life to find out what lurks within
Harrow. Together they assemble the people who they believe can pierce the
mansion's shadows.
Mischief (Harrow novel #2)
Douglas Clegg, Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild award-winning
writer, has begun a story of haunting -- and something in a dark house
that has been awakened...
The mansion overlooks the Hudson River, just outside the town of Watch
Point, New York. It has been empty for decades, but now, it's a private
school for boys. And one of the boys, Jim Hook, should never have come to
Harrow Academy...
For, within the walls, something horrifying awaits him...a haunting more
disturbing than any other...
A group of misfits and malcontents want Jim in their dark fraternity...
And the house called Harrow is hungry.
The Nightmare Chronicles (Winner of the Bram Stoker Award
and the International Horror Guild Award)
by Douglas Clegg
It begins in an old tenement with a horrifying crime. It continues after
midnight, when a young boy, held captive in a basement, is filled with
unearthly visions of fantastic and frightening worlds. How could his
kidnappers know that the ransom would be their own souls? For, as the
hours pass, the boy's nightmares invade his captors like parasites -- and
soon, they become real.
Thirteen nightmares unfold: A young man searches for his dead wife among
the crumbling buildings of Manhattan...a journalist seeks the ultimate
evil in a plague-ridden outpost of India...ancient rituals begin anew with
the mystery of a teenage girl's disappearance...and in a hospital for the
criminally insane, there is only one doorway to salvation...But the night
is not yet over, and the real nightmare has just begun.
Thirteen chilling tales of terror from one of the masters of the horror
story, The Nightmare Chronicles is the chronicle of darkness itself.
Naomi
by Douglas Clegg
From Bram Stoker Award-winning author Douglas Clegg, comes his most
fascinating and enthralling creation yet!
The subways of Manhattan are only the first stage of Jake Richmond's
descent into the vast subterranean passageways beneath the city -- and the
discovery of a mystery and a terror greater than any human being could
imagine.
Naomi went into the tunnels to destroy herself...but found an even more
terrible fate awaiting her in the twisting corridors. And now, the man who
loves Naomi must find her...and bring her back to the world of the living,
a world where a New York brownstone holds a burial ground of those accused
of witchcraft, where the secrets of the living may be found within the
ancient diary of a witch, and where a creature known only as the Serpent
has escaped its bounds at last.
You Come When I Call You
by Douglas Clegg
A novel 12 years in the making, You Come When I Call You is an epic tale
of horror, spanning 20 years in the lives of four friends -- witnesses to
unearthly terror...
The high desert town of Palmetto, California, has turned toxic after
twenty years of nightmares -- In Los Angeles, a woman is tormented by
visions from a horrifying past, and a man steps into a house of torture.
-- On the steps of a church called The Sacrament of the Sacred Heart, a
young woman has been sacrificed in a ritual of darkness -- In New York, a
cab driver dreams awake of the territory of demons -- And an old friend
who calls himself the Desolation Angel has returned to draw them back to
their hometown...
Where, two decades earlier, three boys committed the most brutal of
rituals, an act of such intense savagery that it has ripped apart their
minds -- where an entire town burned against a scarlet sunset -- And
where, in a cavern in a place called No Man's Land, something has been
waiting a long time for those who stole something more precious than life
itself.
Goat Dance
by Douglas Clegg
From Douglas Clegg, award-winning author of The Hour Before Dark and The
Abandoned, comes a novel of unimaginable terror and heart-pounding
suspense. What secrets lie within the ancient place known as the Goat
Dance?
A Haunted Lake . . .
Seven-year-old Teddy Amory should have died that winter's day on Clear
Lake, when she fell through the ice while skating with her older brother,
Jake. But something got inside her that day . . . something terrifying . .
.
A Haunted Town . . .
Nightmarish forces lurk in the mountains of Virginia, and a shadowy
darkness has begun to spread like a shroud over the living. Now a town
must face its terrifying past as a possessed child threatens to unleash an
unspeakable horror . . .
.
Breeder
by Douglas Clegg
"Clegg pulls out the stops of terror: cannibalism, the devil, good magic
turned to evil, grave-robbing and the undead all make this a chilling
story." --Publishers Weekly
From Douglas Clegg, award-winning author of The Priest of Blood and
Afterlife, comes a nightmarish vision of Washington, D.C.-where shadows
and mystery linger in the alleys, and where the haunts of the past come to
life.
This House has a Name . . .
Rachel Adair thought Draper House in Washington, D.C, would be the
perfect place for her and her husband, Hugh, to try and start a family.
But as soon they moved into the century-old townhouse, the nightmares
began: horrific images of the child Rachel lost; the unforgivable sins of
Hugh's father; scenes of blood-curdling rituals . . . and the scraping
sounds of an even greater terror that lives within the walls . . .
Note: some of Douglas Clegg's books are no longer available in
print. These include Afterlife, The Children's Hour, and
The Machinery of Night. When these (and any others) are back in print,
we'll add them to this summary list.
Here
are some places to look online for Clegg novels:
Barnes and Noble
Independent Bookstores
Amazon
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