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Full wrap-around on the hardcover and paperback edition
BOOK DETAILS
Hardcover with dust jacket

ISBN-13: 978-1943910809
List Price: $49.99 U.S.
Pages: 800

Published: 2017

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BOOK DETAILS
Trade paper

ISBN-13: 978-1943910816
List price: $32.99 U.S.
Pages: 800

Published: 2017
Blackwater (1983)
Michael McDowell
With a new introduction by Nathan Ballingrud

Hardcover / Paperback
Due to copyright restrictions, this title cannot ship to UK/Ireland/Australia. Orders placed in those territories will be refunded minus credit card processing fee of 5%.
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Book Description

Blackwater is the saga of a small town, Perdido, Alabama, and Elinor Dammert, the stranger who arrives there under mysterious circumstances on Easter Sunday, 1919. On the surface, Elinor is gracious, charming, anxious to belong in Perdido, and eager to marry Oscar Caskey, the eldest son of Perdido’s first family. But her beautiful exterior hides a shocking secret. Beneath the waters of the Perdido River, she turns into something terrifying, a creature whispered about in stories that have chilled the residents of Perdido for generations. Some of those who observe her rituals in the river will never be seen again ...

Originally published as a series of six volumes in 1983, Blackwater is the crowning achievement of Michael McDowell, author of the Southern Gothic classics Cold Moon Over Babylon and The Elementals and screenwriter of Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas. This first-ever one-volume edition, with a new introduction by Shirley Jackson Award-winning author Nathan Ballingrud, allows a new generation of readers to discover this modern horror classic.


REVIEWS

“Seduces and intrigues . . . makes us impatient for the next volume . . . Blackwater looks like Michael McDowell's best yet . . . he is, beyond any trace of a doubt, one of the absolutely best writers of horror.” – Peter Straub

“McDowell must now be regarded as the finest writer of paperback originals in America.” – Stephen King

“Michael McDowell has a flair for the gruesome . . . the nurturing of utmost horror.” – Washington Post

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

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Michael McDowell was born June 1, 1950 in Enterprise, Alabama and attended public schools in southern Alabama until 1968. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in English from Harvard, and in 1978 he was awarded his Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Brandeis.

His seventh novel written and first to be sold, The Amulet, was published in 1979 and would be followed by over thirty additional volumes of fiction written under his own name or the pseudonyms Nathan Aldyne, Axel Young, Mike McCray, and Preston Macadam. His notable books include the Southern Gothic horror novel The Elementals (1981), the serial novel Blackwater (1983), which was first published in a series of six paperback volumes, and the trilogy of “Jack & Susan” books.

By 1985 he was writing screenplays for television, including episodes for a number of anthology series such as Tales from the Darkside, Amazing Stories, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Tales from the Crypt. He went on to write the screenplay for Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988) and The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), as well as the script for Thinner (1996). McDowell died December 27, 1999 from AIDS-related illness. Tabitha King, wife of author Stephen King, completed an unfinished McDowell novel, Candles Burning, which was published in 2006.



"We owe a debt of gratitude to the publisher Valancourt, whose aim is to resurrect some neglected works of literature, especially those incorporating a supernatural strand, and make them available to a new readership." 
- Times Literary Supplement

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