Bentley Little is the author of numerous novels, short stories, articles, essays, and reviews. After earning a BA in communications and an MA in English, Little sold his soul and abandoned all artistic integrity, working for eight years as a bureaucrat for a midsized city in Orange County, California. His first novel, The Revelation, won the 1990 Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Award for best first novel.
Little serves up a fairly standard horror tale in which a postmillennial nuclear family (web designer father, attorney mother, cell phone-obsessed teenage daughter, and a younger son) move into a haunted house in New Mexico built on a piece of land with an accursed history (the included backstory is somewhat less than compelling). There are some unsettling moments throughout-the young son is seized by compulsions to eat dirt and tunnel into the ground (although Little provides no reasons or explanation for the boy's actions), and the evil force possessing the house encourages some disturbing behavior (sexual and otherwise) in the inhabitants. VERDICT Narrator Dan Butler delivers a nicely understated reading, which manages successfully to express character emotion; unfortunately, he's not given much character depth with which to work. Despite a few shocks, overall, the story falls flat. Of interest only for libraries with large horror collections.-Victoria Caplinger, Durham, NC (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Praise for Bram Stoker Award-Winning Author Bentley Little
"The horror poet laureate...a master of the macabre!"--Stephen King "[Bentley Little is] on par with such greats as Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Peter Straub."--Midwest Book Review "Little possesses the uncanny ability to take everyday situations and turn them into nightmares."--Publishers Weekly "Little has the unparalleled ability to evoke surreal, satiric terror."--Horror Reader
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