Dark Harvest

NOW AN ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE, AVAILABLE FOR STREAMING!Norman Partridge's Bram Stoker Award-winning novel, Dark Harvest, is a powerhouse thrill-ride with all the resonance of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery."“A major talent.” —Stephen KingHalloween, 1963. They call him the October Boy, or Ol' Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death. Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end future in this one-horse town. He's willing to risk everything, including his life, to be a winner for once. But before the night is over, Pete will look into the saw-toothed face of horror—and discover the terrifying true secret of the October Boy.“This is contemporary American writing at its finest.” —Publishers Weekly, starred reviewAt the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. At the start of this mesmerizing new fantasy from Partridge (Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales), it's Halloween night in 1963 in Anytown, U.S.A., and the local teenage boys are ramping up for the annual hunt for the October Boy, a pumpkin-headed being cultivated by the town fathers to run the gauntlet each All Hallows' Eve. The boy who brings him down before he makes it to the local church wins a highly coveted ticket out of town and, as most believe, liberation from the stultifying ennui of small-town life that has crushed all ambition and dreams out of the adults. Pete McCormack is among the most determined boys on the hunt, but this evening he will learn horrifying truths about his town's tradition and the terrible price he must pay for his manhood. Partridge has always had a knack for sifting deeper significance from period pop culture, but here he brilliantly distills a convincing male identity myth from teen rebel drive-in flicks, garish comic book horrors, hard-boiled crime pulps and other bits of lowbrow Americana. Whether read as potent dark fantasy or a modern coming-of-age parable, this is contemporary American writing at its finest. (Oct. 31) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Only six years have passed since this Bram Stoker Award–winning novel was published and already it has the aura of a classic. Though the story takes place in 1963, the lack of specifics makes it timeless, and from the opening words, Partridge’s dire campfire tale feels like it’s been around forever: “A Midwestern town. You know its name. You were born there.” Each Halloween, as is tradition in this Everytown, U.S.A., able-bodied teen boys are let loose into the night with crude weapons to chase down the October Boy (aka Ol’ Hacksaw Face or Sawtooth Jack), a “reaper that grows in the field, the merciless trick with a heart made of treats.” He’s a candy-stuffed scarecrow bodied with writhing vines and topped with a jack-o’-lantern head, and if he’s not killed before midnight, the town, in some indescribable way, will end. But this year the truth of the October Boy’s annual regenesis is uncovered by young Pete, whose blood-spattered night takes a turn different than any in the ritual’s storied history. Partridge drops us in the middle of a cornfield crackling with rural madness, and readers won’t pause to question silly things like logic or reason. Instead they will float along with the dreamy present-tense voice; succumb to the autumnal, sensory details (the October Boy smells like “scorched cinnamon, and gunpowder, and melted wax”); and root for Pete despite the feeling that nothing truly good can result from his success. Required reading for Halloween—unless you’d like to incur the wrath of Sawtooth Jack? --Daniel Kraus

About the Author

Two-time Stoker Award-winner, NORMAN PARTRIDGE is the author of six novels and six short story collections. His fiction ranges from horror and crime to the fantastic. A film adaptation of his lauded Halloween novel, Dark Harvest, is set for a September 2022 release by MGM. He lives and writes in California.

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