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  • Published: 27 August 2019
  • ISBN: 9780525435266
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $39.99
Categories:

Bad Man

A Novel




From Dathan Auerbach, the author of the horror sensation Penpal, a hauntingly dark novel about a young boy who goes missing, and the brother who won't stop looking for him.

From Dathan Auerbach, the author of the horror sensation Penpal, a hauntingly dark novel about a young boy who goes missing, and the brother who won't stop looking for him.

Eric disappeared when he was three years old. Ben looked away for only a second at the grocery store, but that was all it took. His brother was gone. Vanished into the sticky air of the Florida Panhandle.

Five years later, Ben is still looking for his brother. Still searching, while his stepmother sits and waits and whispers for Eric, refusing to leave the house that Ben's father can no longer afford. Now twenty and desperate for work, Ben takes a job on the night stock crew at the only place that will have him: the store that blinked Eric out of existence.

Ben can feel there's something wrong there. With the people. With his boss. With the graffitied baler that shudders and groans and beckons. But he's in the right place. He knows the store has much to show him, so he keeps searching. Except Ben misses the most important thing of all.

That he should have stopped looking.

  • Published: 27 August 2019
  • ISBN: 9780525435266
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $39.99
Categories:

Praise for Bad Man

"An atmospheric and unsettling novel. . . . Auerbach's portrait of an after-hours grocery store--as benign a setting as one could imagine--takes on an aura of almost Gothic menace. Most importantly, his ability to convey the grief, guilt and sense of loss that fuel Ben's fixation gives the book a resonant emotional center. With just two novels, Auerbach has established himself as a significant figure in the post-King generation of horror writers." --The Washington Post

"Auerbach cleverly weaves in the horror trope of creepy kids amid a vibe that's best described as Stephen King meets Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. . . . The novel is wickedly effective in creating a feeling of doom. . . . Bad Man delivers an unexpected gut punch and saves its darkest deeds for an unnerving end." --USA Today

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