... to the website of author Susie Moloney.
Since you’re here, be sure to make ample use of this very versatile
site. Read a review or an excerpt from my latest book, “The
Dwelling,”and then maybe do a little shopping. While shopping
be sure to pick up copies of my other books, too, “Bastion Falls,”
and “A Dry Spell.” During the sometimes painful waiting
period between ordering and shipping, you could spend some time with
me, reading from “selected short fiction,” featuring stories
that I’ve never told anyone else, at least not publicly. Be
the first on your cyber block to read what will soon be carried in
a collection. Hope you’ll stay awhile,
maybe play with my paper doll, and make a “Susie Moloney”
of your very own, suitable for the top of your computer tower, or just
part of a nice display on
the coffee table. And do drop me a note. I love to hear from
strangers.
The stranger the better.
Go ahead, join my cult. You’ll be glad you did.
If you don’t believe me, you can look it up.
The
Dwelling
By Susie Moloney
From Amazon.ca
It's a testament
to author Susie Moloney's skill that the venerable
haunted house comes off not as a cliché but a fearful new beast
in the can't-put-it-down thriller The Dwelling. That Moloney's third
novel lacks the gore of, say, a Clive Barker or a Stephen King makes
The Dwelling that much more powerful: Moloney rattles us in our skulls,
not our guts, and cerebral chills are far tougher to shake.
Real estate agent Glenn Darnley is back on the job after losing her
husband, and her first new listing, at 362 Belisle Street, seems like
a breezy transition back into the workaday world. The house is lovely
albeit boasting some usual features--an ancient bathtub with monster-like
claws chief among them. Glenn sells the house to a troubled young couple,
Rebecca and Daniel Mason, who soon realize they're not quite alone in
their misery. When 362 Belisle suddenly returns to the market, and Glenn's
portfolio, after Daniel Mason's peculiar death, Glenn begins to wonder
if the shadows cast by the light in the attic are more sinister than
first appeared. The subsequent buyers, recently divorced Barbara Parkins
and her "fatso" son Petey, are likewise quick to go, but that
doesn't prevent Glenn from flipping the property yet again, this time
to an alcoholic novelist drawing from his own palette of sorrow. Meanwhile,
the Belisle house is calling to Glenn, and during the surprise conclusion,
we find out why--sort of.
A big part of what makes The Dwelling work is Moloney's characters.
One doesn't necessarily relate to Rebecca Mason's shameless greed or
Barbara Parkins's black moods, but darn it if it doesn't we feel like
we're spying on real people. Moloney's straightforward language also
fosters real momentum; by the time Rebecca and Daniel Mason hit the
scene 30-odd pages in, there is, in horror parlance, no turning back.
A nail-biter from start to finish, The Dwelling establishes Moloney--who
wrote the equally creepy A Dry Spell and Bastion Falls--as one of Canada's
premiere writers of horror fiction.
--Kim Hughes
A DRY
SPELL
By Susie Moloney
Delacorte
The myth of the
rainmaker--the rootless wanderer with the power to make both women and
farmlands blossom under his touch--is given a Stephen King-like twist
in this atmospheric, vividly peopled second novel from Canadian writer
Moloney (Bastion Falls). Goodlands, N.Dak., is a town in the grip of
a four-year drought, which begins about the time that lonely Karen Grange
comes to work for the local branch of Commercial Farm Credit. Forced
to foreclose on her new neighbors and friends, desperate Karen sends
for rainmaker Thompson Keatley. His arrival in Goodlands triggers the
suspicions of the locals, who are crazy for explanations (literally,
in the case of farmer Carl Simpson, who suspects a government plot behind
the drought). It also awakens something much stronger and more malevolent--the
spirit of a dead woman, which takes up residence in a local girl named
Vida Whalley. Moloney balances sharply observed details of small-town
life, including the tensions of failure and poverty, with understated
moments of mystery and horror, creating a modern-day American Gothic
full of such lingering, angry spirits as the ghost that haunts a hairpin
curve called Slaughter Slide. The subtle relationship between Karen
and the curse that seems to be infecting Goodlands--the body discovered
in her backyard when she first came to town; the sinister parasitism
of the bank she works for--lends weight and depth to the novel's climactic
battle between the living and the dead. Yet at no point does the supernatural
element overwhelm the story. In Moloney's capable hands, the special
effects always work in support of characterization--which is the best
special effect of all.
Bastion
Falls
By Susie Moloney
On a September day in a town called Bastion Falls, it started to snow. And snow. And snow.
Young, pretty, and divorced, Marilyn was nobody special in Bastion Falls, a town like any other: People had affairs, cheated on taxes, and kept their secrets. But on the day of the freak September snowstorm, everything changed. Marilyn's old truck died on the highway into town. And a test of her courage, and her soul, was about to begin.
Fifteen-year-old Shandy seemed ordinary too. But she had a gift for seeing things others couldn't. And as snow buried the town, as early autumn became bitter winter, terrible things were beginning to happen to the residents of Bastion Falls--particularly the scared ones, the ones with something to hide. Now fate was bringing Marilyn and Shandy together: two women who would find each other, take a leap of faith, and race time and nature to save a town--and set themselves free.
"Moloney is a gifted storyteller, drawing her likeable, credible
character with bold strokes and subtle touches."
--The Globe and Mail
