Moontown

“This finely written and sharply told tale is a strong example of modern horror…the kaleidoscope of peril keeps readers guessing and gasping."—Publishers Weekly “Atkins’ fusion of fast-paced narration and surreal horror packs a large wallop…His continuously morphing and malevolent Moontown demon is memorable enough to rival Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger."—Booklist “Atkins is a brilliant supplier of shudders and splendors.”—Clive BarkerShelley Campbell only meant to help people.Recruited by her professor into working with a group-study program investigating phobias, Shelley has been using her ability as an empath to enter the minds of troubled patients. Within the dreamscape of their memories, Shelley uncovers their repressed childhood fears in order to help heal them.But some fears are buried for a reason. Now, more than lost dreams are resurfacing. Something else is waking too, something dark and long forgotten, something hungry for the taste of our terror…Shelley Campbell has gone too deep, has found the place where the darkness waits. A place ruled by the moon, a place where midnight lives, a place where every night is Halloween.A place called Moontown

From Publishers Weekly

In Atkins's fourth Halloween horror-fantasy (after the 1999 collection Wishmaster and Other Stories), Shelley Campbell, psychic graduate student, uses her gift to help phobic and compulsive patients. As Shelley explores one mind after another, she finds a pattern of supernatural harassment that scares victims to death. Its locus is the dreamlike Moontown, which soon intrudes into Shelley's mind and the real world. This finely written and sharply told tale is a strong example of modern horror, though it suffers from some of the genre's less desirable tics. Shelley doesn't seem to notice the constant sexual threat and objectification her creepy boss subjects her to, but readers will have trouble ignoring it. On the other hand, she's quite capable of rescuing herself, and the kaleidoscope of peril successfully keeps readers guessing and gasping even when the plot thread slackens. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Shelley Campbell is a young psychologist with a remarkable and increasingly volatile gift. As part of a group study program devoted to curing phobias, she has the ability to enter her clients’ dreams and unearth their deepest childhood fears. The Ragman, Jimmy Midnight, and Johnny in the Dark are names belonging to the bogeymen haunting their long-forgotten nightmares. Yet when her clients begin dying off in ways that reflect their worst anxieties, Shelley learns with growing alarm that her powers aren’t only feeding these imaginary demons but bringing them to flesh-and-blood life. After Jimmy Midnight invades the psyche of a small boy under her care, Shelley realizes it’s up to her to vanquish the fiend on his own turf by letting herself be lured into a shifting dreamscape known as Moontown. Atkins’ fusion of fast-paced narration and surreal horror packs a large wallop for such a slender novel. His continuously morphing and malevolent Moontown demon is memorable enough to rival Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger. --Carl Hays

About the Author

Born in Liverpool, England, PETER ATKINS is the author of the novels MORNINGSTAR and BIG THUNDER and the movies HELLRAISER II, HELLRAISER III, HELLRAISER IV, and WISHMASTER. His short fiction has appeared in numerous award-winning anthologies including THE MUSEUM OF HORRORS, DARK DELICACIES II, and several volumes of BEST NEW HORROR. He has also written for the stage, television, and comic books. Peter Atkins is married and lives in Los Angeles.

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