Usher's Passing

Robert R. McCammon

Open Road Media, Oct 18, 2011 - Fiction - 410 pages

Poe’s classic tale lives on in this gothic novel of ancestral madness in the mountains of modern-day North Carolina, from a New York Times–bestselling author.
 
Ever since Edgar Allan Poe looted a family’s ignoble secret history for his classic story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” living in the shadow of that sick dynasty has been an inescapable scourge for generations of Usher descendants. But not for horror novelist Rix Usher.
 
Years ago, he fled the isolated family estate of Usherland in the menacing North Carolina hills to pursue his writing career. He promised never to return. But his father’s impending death has brought Rix back home to assume the role of Usher patriarch—and face his worst fears.
 
His arrival forces him to confront a devious and impassive family and his vulnerable sister’s slow descent into insanity. Stirring memories of the grim folktales born out of the surrounding Briartop Mountains and the terrifying legends of missing children, Rix knows that in the dark, twisted corridors of Usherland, that dreadful something he saw as a young boy is still there. It’s waiting for him, as decayed and undying as the Usher heritage, and more depraved than anything Poe could have imagined.
 
This eerie novel by the Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Swan Song and Boy’s Life is “a frightening pleasure” and a worthy tribute to the master who inspired it (St. Louis Post-Dispatch).
 

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Equestrienne - LibraryThing

I loved the Gothic themes in the book; McCammon is a guy who characterizes the spirit of Halloween. The middle of the novel is a great place to be, too bad the ending was weak.

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Carl_Alves - LibraryThing

When I first started reading this book, I thought it would be a historical fiction novel featuring Edgar Allen Poe and the Usher family that he wrote about over a century ago. It turned out to be set ...

About the author

One of the founders of the Horror Writers Association, Robert R. McCammon (b. 1952) is one of the country’s most accomplished authors of modern horror and historical fiction. Raised by his grandparents in Birmingham, Alabama, McCammon published his first novel, the Revelations-inspired Baal, when he was only twenty-six. His writings continued in a supernatural vein throughout the 1980s, producing such bestselling titles as Swan Song, The Wolf’s Hour, and Stinger.  In 1991 Boy’s Life won the World Fantasy Award for best novel. After his next novel, Gone South, McCammon took a break from writing to spend more time with his family. He did not publish another novel until 2002’s Speaks the Nightbird. Since then he has followed “fixer” Matthew Corbett in two sequels, The Queen of Bedlam and Mister Slaughter. His newest novel is The Five. McCammon and his family continue to live in Birmingham.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Usher's Passing
• Author: Robert R. McCammon
• Publisher: Open Road Media, 2011
• ISBN: 145323151X, 9781453231517
• Length: 410 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Horror; Fiction / Thrillers / Supernatural; Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense