These six novellas tell the story of a place where the rain is always falling, nighttime is always near, and your darkest fears and desires await. Welcome to Goblin.
Mr. Malerman is a master of the kind of horror that sneaks up on you, not from Transylvania, but from right downtown. Goblin is Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street, with added grue.
As a reader of dark horror and fantasy for most of my life, I do not scare easily. However, Goblin put some chills down my spine and created vivid horrific images that I will not soon forget ... what an ending ... I especially enjoyed how the six stories do not run into each other but are cleverly sprinkled with suggestions and brief allusions to the others. This collection is a wicked hybrid of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone and Stephen King’s Creepshow as each story features a blend of the ironic and the horrific. It is a must-read for any fan of the supernatural genre.
It’s hard not to compare the town of Goblin to King’s haunted Derry. But at its heart, Goblin is all Malerman. Throughout the stories, he writes like a downhill train, weaving Goblin’s past and present into one rain-soaked horror show with stories featuring, among others, a man obsessed with being scared to death by a ghost; a hunter with forbidden game on his mind; and a magician whose magic might not be 'clean' ... These stories offer up a history lesson and guided tour of a severely troubled town. The writer-as-tour-guide is very clearly enjoying the trip, and it’s impossible not to revel in the dark glee.
