A new psychological thriller with links to his acclaimed bestsellers KOKO and THE THROAT -- from the co-author of the massive international No 1 bestseller BLACK HOUSE. From the prolific and ferocious imagination of Peter Straub, the acclaimed master of literary horror, springs a groundbreaking story of the persistence of evil told with tantalizing ambiguity and formal audacity. A woman kills herself for no apparent reason. A week later, her teenage son disappears. The vanished boy's uncle, Timothy Underhill -- familiar to Straub's readers from Koko and The Throat -- is compelled to return to his hometown of Millhaven to discover what he can. A madman known as the Sherman Park Killer has been haunting the neighbourhood, but Underhill believes that Mark's obsession with a local abandoned house is at the root of his disappearance. He fears that in peeling back the house's hideous secrets, Mark came across its last and greatest secret -- a lost girl, one who has coaxed Mark deeper and deeper into her mysterious domain where he must encounter a fearsome adversary.