open
Upgrade to a better browser, please.

Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Books

Universal Harvester

Added By: illegible_scribble
Last Updated: Engelbrecht

Universal Harvester

Purchase this book through IndieBound.org Purchase this book from Amazon.com Purchase this book from Amazon.co.uk
Author: John Darnielle
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017
Scribe Publications, 2017
Series:

This book does not appear to be part of a series. If this is incorrect, and you know the name of the series to which it belongs, please let us know.

Submit Series Details

Book Type: Novel
Genre: Horror
Sub-Genre Tags: Psychological
Awards:
Lists:  
Links:
Avg Member Rating:
(16 reads / 6 ratings)



Synopsis

Jeremy works at the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa. It's a small town in the center of the state -- the first a in Nevada pronounced ay. This is the late 1990s, and even if the Hollywood Video in Ames poses an existential threat to Video Hut, there are still regular customers, a rush in the late afternoon. It's good enough for Jeremy: it's a job, quiet and predictable, and it gets him out of the house, where he lives with his dad and where they both try to avoid missing Mom, who died six years ago in a car wreck.

But when a local schoolteacher comes in to return her copy of Targets -- an old movie, starring Boris Karloff, one Jeremy himself had ordered for the store? she has an odd complaint: "There's something on it," she says, but doesn't elaborate. Two days later, a different customer returns a different tape, a new release, and says it's not defective, exactly, but altered: "There's another movie on this tape."

Jeremy doesn't want to be curious, but he brings the movies home to take a look. And, indeed, in the middle of each movie, the screen blinks dark for a moment and the movie is replaced by a few minutes of jagged, poorly lit home video. The scenes are odd and sometimes violent, dark, and deeply disquieting. There are no identifiable faces, no dialogue or explanation? the first video has just the faint sound of someone breathing? but there are some recognizable landmarks. These have been shot just outside of town.

In Universal Harvester, the once placid Iowa fields and farmhouses now sinister and imbued with loss and instability and profound foreboding. The novel will take Jeremy and those around him deeper into this landscape than they have ever expected to go. They will become part of a story that unfolds years into the past and years into the future, part of an impossible search for something someone once lost that they would do anything to regain.


Excerpt

No excerpt currently exists for this novel.


Reviews

There are currently no reviews for this novel. Be the first to submit one! You must be logged in to submit a review in the BookTrackr section above.


Images

No alternate cover images currently exist for this novel.