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Black House
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Black House
Author: Stephen King, Peter Straub

Book Information
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Type: Paperback
Rating:

ISBN-13: 9780345441034 - ISBN-10: 0345441036
Publication Date: 8/27/2002
Pages: 672


Other Versions of this Book: Hardcover, Hardcover, Audio Cassette (Unabridged)

Book Description:
Twenty years ago, a boy named Jack Sawyer travelled to a parallel universe called The Territories to save his mother and her Territories "twinner" from a premature and agonizing death that would have brought cataclysm to the other world. Now Jack is a retired Los Angeles homicide detective living in the nearly nonexistent hamlet of Tamarack, WI. He has no recollection of his adventures in the Territories and was compelled to leave the police force when an odd, happenstance event threatened to awaken those memories.

When a series of gruesome murders occur in western Wisconsin that are reminiscent of those committed several decades earlier by a real-life madman named Albert Fish, the killer is dubbed "The Fisherman" and Jack's buddy, the local chief of police, begs Jack to help his inexperienced force find him. But is this merely the work of a disturbed individual, or has a mysterious and malignant force been unleashed in this quiet town? What causes Jack's inexplicable waking dreams, if that is what they are, of robins' eggs and red feathers? It's almost as if someone is trying to tell him something. As that message becomes increasingly impossible to ignore, Jack is drawn back to the Territories and to his own hidden past, where he may find the soul-strength to enter a terrifying house at the end of a deserted track of forest, there to encounter the obscene and ferocious evils sheltered within it.


From the Hardcover edition.

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Top Member Book Reviews

Teresa F. (DrTeresa) wrote on 2/11/2007...

3 member(s) found this review helpful.

Another chilling, spooky Straub and King masterpiece. You'll be too scared to keep reading, too enthralled to put it down.

Sarah R. wrote on 5/9/2007...

2 member(s) found this review helpful.

Not a bad book overall, but I prefered The Talisman.

Juli M. (curveball) wrote on 6/19/2007...

1 member(s) found this review helpful.

Loved this book!

Jay G. wrote on 2/11/2007...

1 member(s) found this review helpful.

Good colloboration between two of the best. A good read.

Angel S. - Titus, AL wrote on 1/16/2007...

1 member(s) found this review helpful.

This was a good thriller! It is definitely a sequel to "The Talisman."

Danny J. (DanJohnson) wrote on 11/17/2006...

1 member(s) found this review helpful.

Jack Sawyer returns to "the Territories" as two of the best writers of horror fiction team up once again for this excellent follow-up to "The Talisman".

Marta T. wrote on 11/1/2006...

1 member(s) found this review helpful.

stephen king always comes out with great books

Chrisenda H. (dmpgirl08) wrote on 10/27/2006...

1 member(s) found this review helpful.

Awesome! This is the first of the newer(at least to me) Stephen King! It was wonderful!

Frances D. (franniedid) wrote on 10/4/2006...

1 member(s) found this review helpful.

I thought the Talisman was really good but this one was even better

Maria C. wrote on 8/19/2006...

1 member(s) found this review helpful.

Awesome book - definitely kept me interested!


Please Rate these Book Reviews

Dave F. wrote on 10/17/2009...


The Black House is an excellent read. These two authors are at the top of their game.

Trevor N. (trevor) wrote on 7/22/2009...


I liked The Talisman but this one started out sleepwalking and I couldn't finish it. I love many of King's books, but he has written a fair number that aren't worth the time, this being one of them.

Robert P. wrote on 5/21/2009...


I read the first part of this series decades ago. Within the first couple chapters I was able to fall right back into the world of 'The Talisman'. I haven't been reading a lot of horror or thriller novels, so it took me a little while to get back to that state of suspended belief. But, once I did it was a great read.

I definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoyed the The Talisman.

Valerie (waterbearer) wrote on 3/26/2009...


This was the only KING book that I've ever thought about chucking out the window and not finishing. It was excruciating to begin and I started it, put it down, re-started it probably 10 times over a period of 3 years. Once I got past the first 4 or 5 pages (80-100 pages) it flowed better with me. This is the one book by Stephen King that I'd tell a fellow King-lover to not bother with.

peregrine - Columbia Hts, MN wrote on 3/9/2009...


'The Talisman' is one of my all-time favourite books, so I was very excited to get my hands on the sequel, 'Black House'. Jack Sawyer is all grown up and has mostly forgotten his talent for Traveling.. until events conspire to bring him back to the Territories. A new adventure with old friends, a darker tale for the reading audience who has grown up since 'The Talisman' was published, the second book is edgier and more violent than the first. The only thing I did not like about this book is that it doesn't delve into what Jack has been up to since 'The Talisman'. We never learn what he did during the intervening years, so on that score, it disappoints. I highly recommend this book for fans of the first - it is well worth the read.

Joseph M. (joeymac) wrote on 1/21/2009...


Best Stephen King book I have read since, well the Tailsman (also with Peter Straub)

Christine M. wrote on 11/29/2008...


In the seemingly paradisal Wisconsin town of French Landing, small distortions disturb the beauty: a talking crow, an old man obeying strange internal marching orders, a house that is both there and not quite there. And roaming the town is a terrible fiend nicknamed the Fisherman, who is abducting and murdering small children and eating their flesh. The sheriff desperately wants the help of a retired Los Angeles cop, who once collared another serial killer in a neighboring town.
Of course, this is no ordinary policeman, but Jack Sawyer, hero of Stephen King and Peter Straub's 1984 fantasy The Talisman. At the end of that book, the 13-year-old Jack had completed a grueling journey through an alternate realm called the Territories, found a mysterious talisman, killed a terrible enemy, and saved the life of his mother and her counterpart in the Territories. Now in his 30s, Jack remembers nothing of the Talisman, but he also hasn't entirely forgotten:

When these faces rise or those voices mutter, he has until now told himself the old lie, that once there was a frightened boy who caught his mother's neurotic terror like a cold and made up a story, a grand fantasy with good old Mom-saving Jack Sawyer at its center. None of it was real, and it was forgotten by the time he was sixteen. By then he was calm. Just as he's calm now, running across his north field like a lunatic, leaving that dark track and those clouds of startled moths behind him, but doing it calmly.
Jack is abruptly pulled into the case--and back into the Territories--by the Fisherman himself, who sends Jack a child's shoe, foot still attached. As Jack flips back and forth between French Landing and the Territories, aided by his 20-years-forgotten friend Speedy Parker and a host of other oddballs (including a blind disk jockey, the beautiful mother of one of the missing children, and a motorcycle gang calling itself the "Hegelian Scum"), he tracks both the Fisherman and a much bigger fish: the abbalah, the Crimson King who seeks to destroy the axle of worlds.
While The Talisman was a straightforward myth in 1980s packaging, Black House is richer and more complex, a fantasy wrapped in a horror story inside a mystery, sporting a clever tangle of references to Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, jazz, baseball, and King's own Dark Tower saga. Talisman fans will find the sure-footed Jack has worn well--as has the King/Straub writing style, which is much improved with the passage of two decades.

Cathy S. (katy0118) wrote on 11/13/2008...


okay

Candice J. (pibblegrl) - Meriden, CT wrote on 5/22/2008...


Good story.

Larry H. (lcsaved) wrote on 12/20/2007...


This was perhaps one of the most captivating and interesting book in the horror Genre that I have read in some time. I hope these two collaborate again sometime soon. They mel together quite well as authors


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