The Woods Are Dark: Restored and Uncut

Neala and Sherri stopped in Barlow for dinner on their way to camp in the woods for a few days. The Dills family thought the small motel in town would be a safe stopping point on their way to a vacation rental. Little did they know they would all end up shackled to dead trees, waiting for Them to arrive.When this novel was first published, it was heavily cut, with nearly forty pages removed. Restored in 2008, it is now available as an e-book in the UK, Canada, and Australia for the first time.

From Publishers Weekly

Not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, this reissue of Laymon's second horror novel (first published in 1981) restores the editorially butchered text to all of its gory glory. In gleefully gruesome fashion, it recounts the ordeal of three different groups of people-hikers Neala and Sherri, vacationing teacher Lander Dills and his family, and local yokel Johnny Robbins-as they attempt to defend themselves against the cannibal Krulls, a forest-dwelling family of inbred savages who for centuries have demanded that the citizens of the nearby burg of Barlow provide them with waylaid travelers for their feeding and breeding. In their desperation to survive at all costs, the seemingly civilized victims find themselves stooping to behavior as beastly as that practiced by their predatory pursuers. This novel is prime Laymon (The Cellar), featuring characters reduced to appetites both carnal and carnivorous and a plot flensed free of all but the bloody bones of storytelling. While not every horror reader's meat, this savage shockfest is a good example of the pulpy approach that has earned the late author a loyal readership for three decades. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Richard Laymon was born in Chicago in 1947 and grew up in California. Four of his books have been shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Award, which he won in 2001 with The Travelling Vampire Show. Among his many acclaimed works of horror and suspense are The Stake, Savage, After Midnight and the four novels in the Beast House Chronicles: The Cellar, The Beast House, The Midnight Tour and Friday Night in Beast House. He died in February 2001.

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