Julia: A Novel

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Story—and the master of American horror—tells the terrifying story of a woman who, in her desperation to flee the past, encounters an inexplicable aura of evil.  Julia’s first purchase upon leaving her husband is a large, old-fashioned house in Kensington, where she plans to live by herself, well away from her soon-to-be-ex and the home where their young daughter died. She feels a peculiar affinity for the house right away, a feeling that deepens with each glimpse of a mysterious little girl—blond, like her daughter—in the neighborhood, and even in her dreams   But the little girl and the big house have an inexplicable aura of evil. And Julia quickly discovers that escaping her past is not as simple as turning a key.

Lawrence Block

“Peter Straub is a national treasure.”

New Statesman

“An extraordinarily gripping and tantalizing read.”

Milwaukee Journal

“A crazy-quilt of horror.”

Chicago Tribune

“Genuinely frightening.”

The Buffalo News

“I haven’t read anything that so terrifyingly evoked the presence of evil and supernatural threat since The Exorcist. Julia may be better.”

Robert Bloch, author of Psycho

“Haunting, in every sense of the word.”

The New York Times

“You expect the horrifying in the fiction of Peter Straub . . . and you get it.”

The Plain Dealer

“[Straub] is a master at blurring the supernatural, the real-world-scary, and the monsters in your psyche.”

Cosmopolitan

“Not since Edgar Allan Poe has an author taken such liberties with his readers’ nerves.”

People

“Straub is the master of subtle, smoldering dread.”

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Straub well understands the dark recesses of the psyche where the personal demons dwell.”

The Washington Post

“Peter Straub is a fine storyteller.”

Stephen King

“When Peter Straub turns on all his jets, no one in the scream factory can equal him.”

About the Author

PETER STRAUB is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels. In the Night Room and Lost Boy, Lost Girl are winners of the Bram Stoker Award, as is his collection 5 Stories. Straub is the editor of numerous anthologies, including the two-volume American Fantastic Tale from the Library of America. He died in 2022.

Reviews

News