The Night of the Hunter: Vintage Movie Classics (A Vintage Mov...

The bestselling, National Book Award–finalist novel that inspired Charles Laughton’s expressionist horror classic starring Robert Mitchum and Shelley Winters.  Two young children, Pearl and John Harper, are being raised alone by their mother in Cresap’s Landing, Ohio. Their father Ben has just been executed for killing two men in the course of an armed robbery. Ben never told anyone where he hid the ten thousand dollars he stole; not his widow Willa, not his lawyer, nor his cell-mate Henry “Preacher” Powell. But Preacher, with his long history of charming his way into widows’ hearts and lives, has an inkling that Ben's money could be within his reach. As soon as he is free, Preacher makes his way up the river to visit the Harper family where—he hopes—a little child shall lead him to the fortune that he seeks.   Foreword by JULIA KELLER

Richard Price

“60 years after its original publication, Davis Grubb’s Night of the Hunter remains the gold standard of Southern Noir. Grubb’s unforgettably charismatic and psychopathic villain, Harry Powell, still has the power to flood your 21st century dreams with terror.”

The New York Times

“A thriller which commands one’s frozen attention. It is also a work of beauty and power and astonishing verbal magic.”

From AudioFile

This superb, suspenseful novel formed the basis of the only film ever directed by Charles Laughton, a cult classic starring Robert Mitchum, Lillian Gish, and Shelly Winters. During the Depression, a psychopath masquerading as an itinerant preacher, begins a ruthless quest for ill-gotten loot, the whereabouts of which are known only by the young son of a dead thief and his younger sister. Jeff Harding pulls out all the stops, fully-voicing the West Virginia characters and contributing a spooky grumble to the narration. At times he sends shivers up your spine; at other times he is melodramatic, bathetic, or unintentionally funny. He is, however, never dull, and neither is this book. Y.R. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About the Author

Davis Grubb (1919–1980) was an American short-story writer and novelist. Born in Moundsville, West Virginia, he moved to New York City in 1940 to be a writer. His stories were published in magazines such as Collier’s, Cosmopolitan, and Woman’s Home Companion, and in three collections. The Night of the Hunter, the first of his ten novels, was an instant bestseller and finalist for the National Book Award. Some of his short stories were adapted for television on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery; his novel Fools’ Parade was the basis for a 1971 film starring James Stewart.

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