The horror genre is an extremely delicate thing. You can talk to filmmakers and even psychologists who've studied the genre, and even they don't understand what works or what doesn't work. More importantly, they don't understand why it works when it works.

I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.

Every marriage has two hearts, one light and one dark

A place is yours when you know where all the roads go.

Oh, there were all sorts of things to wonder about, but the truth was simple: here stood this door alone on an endless stretch of beach, and it was for only one of two things: opening or leaving closed.

Mornings belong to whatever is new; the current composition. Afternoons are for naps and letters.

Terrifying. . . . A Dark Matter is populated with vivid, sympathetic characters, and driven by terrors both human and supernatural. It's the kind of book that's impossible to put down once it has been picked up. It kept me reading far into the night. Straub builds otherworldly terror without ever losing touch with his attractive cast of youngsters, who age beautifully. Put this one high on your list.