Out of print for more than ten years, Bloch's conclusion to his terrifying Psycho Trilogy takes readers back to the Bates Motel, which has been turned into a tourist attraction--and the site of a whole new series of murders.

The Bates motel once again becomes the setting for murder, and investigative reporter Amelia Haines discovers that killer-catching is a dangerous game

The Bates motel once again becomes the setting for murder, and investigative reporter Amelia Haines discovers that killer-catching is a dangerous game

Marion is lost on a dark and lonely road; she's tired and hungry and afraid. She thinks she's dreaming when she sees a motel sign shining in the darkness: Bates Motel. But for Marion the nightmare is just beginning ... To most people Psycho needs no introduction, but although Alfred Hitchcock's film was largely faithful to the book, in the novel itself you will find a story more nuanced and - if possible - even darker.

“Horror author Chet Williamson ably succeeds in the tough task of creating a sequel to Robert Bloch’s masterpiece, Psycho; a prequel to the less effective Psycho II; and a solid story in its own right...The novel shines. Whenever Norman gets the spotlight, the novel feels like a lost Bloch work.” —Publishers Weekly The original Psycho novel by Robert Bloch was published in 1959 and became an instant hit, leading to the smash movie only a year later, which brought Norman Bates's terrifying story into the public consciousness, where it still remains (proven by the success of the tv series, Bates Motel). It took Bloch 23 years to write another Psycho novel, revealing that Norman had been in a mental institution the entire time. In that sequel, Norman quickly escapes the sanitarium and goes on a killing spree in Hollywood. But what happened in that asylum during those two decades? Until now, no one has known. It's 1960. Norman Bates is in the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and it's up to Dr. Felix Reed to bring him out of his catatonic state. But Norman and Dr. Reed have obstacles in twisted fellow patients and staff members who think of the institution as a prison rather than a place of healing. And the greatest obstacle is the building itself, once a private sanitarium, rumored to be haunted. A wild card appears in the persona of Robert Newman, Norman's twin brother, taken away at birth after the attending doctor pronounced him brain damaged. As Robert and Norman grow to know each other, Norman senses a darkness in Robert, even deeper than that which has lurked in Norman himself. Soon, murders begin to occur and a shocking chain of events plunge us even deeper into the deranged madness inside the walls of Psycho: Sanitarium.

A visionary book in the repertoire of prison literature. When Normal Mailer was writing The Executioner's Song, he received a letter from Jack Henry Abbott, a convict, in which Abbott offered to educate him in the realities of life in a maximum security prison. This book organizes Abbott's by now classic letters to Mailer, which evoke his infernal vision of the prison nightmare.

The essays presented in this book focus on Psycho, both the novel by Robert Bloch (1950) and the film by Alfred Hitchcock (1960). Therefore, the different approaches range from film studies to literary criticism. Norman Bates has become an icon of the late twentieth century horror genre, and the movie set the basis for later cinematic developments. Over 50 years after the release of the book and the movie it inspired, new readings, revisions and adaptations of the domestic tragedy of Norman Bates and his mother are still being produced, as recently as Sacha Gervasi’s Hitchock in 2012. Now the curtains (either on the stage or in the bathroom) are about to open and a most peculiar house – with its silhouette and endorsement of doom – is waiting up on the hill. No cameras or pencils are allowed; you’re invited to a ritual that only your eyes will view and your imagination will embody. Leave all hope behind and enter at your own risk. The Bates’ terrifying rollercoaster welcomes you. Nothing is over here … at least not until it overcomes you.

Architecture plays an important role In the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Steven Jacobs devotes lengthy discussion to a series of domestic buildings with the help of a number of reconstructed floor plans made specially for this book.

Horror films revel in taking viewers into shadowy places where the evil resides, whether it is a house, a graveyard or a dark forest. These mysterious spaces foment the terror at the heart of horror movies, empowering the ghastly creatures that emerge to kill and torment. With Dark Places, Barry Curtis leads us deep inside these haunted spaces to explore them – and the monstrous antagonists who dwell there. In this wide-ranging and compelling study, Curtis demonstrates how the claustrophobic interiors of haunted spaces in films connect to the ‘dark places’ of the human psyche. He examines diverse topics such as the special effects – ranging from crude to state-of-the-art – used in movies to evoke supernatural creatures; the structures, projections and architecture of horror movie sets; and ghosts as symbols of loss, amnesia, injustice and vengeance. Dark Places also examines the reconfiguration of the haunted house in film as a motel, an apartment, a road or a spaceship, and how these re-imagined spaces thematically connect to Gothic fictions. Curtis draws his examples from numerous iconic films – including Nosferatu, Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Shining – as well as lesser-known international works, which allow him to consider different cultural ideas of ‘haunting’. Japanese horror films and their Hollywood remakes – such as Ringu and The Ring, or Juon and The Grudge – come under particular scrutiny, as he explores Japanese cinema’s preoccupation with malevolent forces from the past. Whether you love the splatter of blood or prefer to hide under the couch, Dark Places cuts to the heart of why we are drawn to carnage.

From the author of Daughters of the Revolution and The Bostons (winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for fiction) come eleven stories about sex and death, violence and desire, love and madness, set in a vast American landscape that ranges from the largest private residence in Manhattan to the lush rain forests and marijuana farms of Northern California. In “Francis Bacon,” an aspiring writer learns essential lessons from an aging pornographer. In “The Snake,” a restless Jungian analyst sheds one existence after another. In “The Boundary,” a muralist falls in love with a troubled boy from the rez. In the surreal “She Bites,” a man builds an architecturally distinguished doghouse as his wife slowly transforms. And in the transcendent, three-part title story, two best friends face their strange fates, linked by a determination to wrest meaning and coherence from lives spiraling out of control. At once philosophical and compulsively readable, Amor and Psycho dives into our darkest spaces, confronting the absurdity, poetry and brutality of human existence. This ebook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.