Purity (Cemetery Dance Novella Series, No. 8)

Limited time only price for this full-length novella!From award-winning author Douglas Clegg comes a dark psychological thriller of madness, love and turning 18 -- and murder. In the novella PURITY, the darkest force is love.Owen Crites has watched Jenna Montgomery flower into a beautiful young woman as they've practically grown up together through the summers; Owen is the gardener's son who will one day become groundskeeper of the Montgomery summer estate on Outerbridge Island.Now, when they both reach adolescence, Owen begins to understand that Jenna is meant for a different life in adulthood than he is destined for -- and he knows that he must somehow keep her on the island until she no longer wants to leave.Enter Jimmy McTeague, the young tennis star from Manhattan, heir to a sporting goods fortune, who has also come to spend the summer with the Montgomery's -- and soon, a triangle of love, hate, and the darkest of human impulses emerges. "Clegg turns the screws dexterously in this sleek, multifaceted suspense story...Clegg brings them together in a vacation paradise saturated in alcohol, entitlement and hypocrisy..." -- Publisher's WeeklyType & Subject: fiction, psychological suspense, thriller, dark thriller, mystery, horror, suspense, novella, identity, sociopath, murder, teen, bisexual, mystery & thriller, gay/lesbian, dark romance, summer.

From Publishers Weekly

Clegg (You Come When I Call You [Forecasts, Mar. 6]) turns the screws dexterously in this sleek, multifaceted suspense story, twisting an ill-fated love triangle into a framework for violent tragedy. Owen Crites, teenage son of a gardener to the rich on Outerbridge Island, pines for debutante Jenna Montgomery, a childhood sweetheart who comes to stay each summer with her parents. Devastated when Jenna arrives the summer of their 18th year with preppie tennis star Jimmy McTeague in tow, Owen schemes to win her back by seducing his sexually conflicted rival--and then presenting himself as the waylaid victim to Jenna. Ensuing events, though surprising, flow ineluctably from the behavior of Clegg's deftly sketched characters. Owen is intriguingly complex: sympathetic in his insecurity and social na vet , but creepy in his obsessive idolatry of a primitive god appropriated from pulp horror stories. Jimmy, Jenna and even Jenna's love-starved mother, whose exchanges with Owen smolder with sexual tension, all have private moments in which they reveal unspoken, potentially volatile discontent with their lives. Clegg brings them together in a vacation paradise saturated in alcohol, entitlement and hypocrisy, from which a fall seems inevitable. With uncommon finesse, he beguiles the reader into believing that the destinies carved for his doomed modern souls by social caste and economic privilege differ little from the inescapable fates ordained in classic tragedy. (June) FYI: Clegg won an International Horror Guild Award for his short-fiction collection The Nightmare Chronicles at the World Horror Convention in May. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Clegg (You Come When I Call You [Forecasts, Mar. 6]) turns the screws dexterously in this sleek, multifaceted suspense story, twisting an ill-fated love triangle into a framework for violent tragedy. Owen Crites, teenage son of a gardener to the rich on Outerbridge Island, pines for debutante Jenna Montgomery, a childhood sweetheart who comes to stay each summer with her parents. Devastated when Jenna arrives the summer of their 18th year with preppie tennis star Jimmy McTeague in tow, Owen schemes to win her back by seducing his sexually conflicted rivalAand then presenting himself as the waylaid victim to Jenna. Ensuing events, though surprising, flow ineluctably from the behavior of Clegg's deftly sketched characters. Owen is intriguingly complex: sympathetic in his insecurity and social na?vet?, but creepy in his obsessive idolatry of a primitive god appropriated from pulp horror stories. Jimmy, Jenna and even Jenna's love-starved mother, whose exchanges with Owen smolder with sexual tension, all have private moments in which they reveal unspoken, potentially volatile discontent with their lives. Clegg brings them together in a vacation paradise saturated in alcohol, entitlement and hypocrisy, from which a fall seems inevitable. With uncommon finesse, he beguiles the reader into believing that the destinies carved for his doomed modern souls by social caste and economic privilege differ little from the inescapable fates ordained in classic tragedy. (June) FYI: Clegg won an International Horror Guild Award for his short-fiction collection The Nightmare Chronicles at the World Horror Convention in May. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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