Midwestern Gothic

Books

Close your eyes. Picture open plains, wheat stalks swaying gently in the wind. Picture the quaint Main Street of a one-stoplight town. Picture endless summers on sunny, tranquil lakes. With four provocative novellas, Kill Creek author and Kansas native Scott Thomas takes a hatchet to the idyllic tropes of the American heartland. In The Door in the Field, Thomas follows a quarrelsome construction worker named Rayland Allen whose bad day becomes a far worse night when drinks at an off-the-books establishment deep in the woods set Ray down an unforeseeably bloody path. In The Boy in the Woods, Thomas follows young Eddie Reicher, who lingers a day too long at summer camp as unholy terror creeps in. Something evil has infected the counselors. And Eddie will have to do everything he can--even kill--if he hopes to survive the night. In One Half of a Child's Face, Thomas follows the recently divorced Sienna Franklin. Spying on her daughter and ex-husband, she notices an odd painting hanging on the wall of an ...