The best-written horror novel of the year

Read the opening pages from our pick below ^ Plus Part 19 of The Demon Inside David Lynch

Photo by Pierry Oliveira

In today’s issue

—’The reason Toby’s pretty sure it was a transplant who came up with the game is that, if you’d lived through that night, then the whole Lake Witch thing isn’t just a fun costume. But it is, too, which is what the transplants, who had no parents dead in those waters, figured out’: the opening pages of the best-written book on the shortlist for this year’s Bram Stoker Award for best horror novel, the winner of which will be announced tomorrow. We’ll soon publish a masterclass on prose style by its author, and we have masterclasses coming up by many more of the world’s greatest writers.

On Tuesday we picked John Langan’s The Fisherman as the best-written previous winner of the award, part of our project to find the most stylishly novel of the century in any genre.

—‘In their usual bleary-eyed half-baked drowsy way, that’s what they vaguely reckon might see them through life’s trials, the wisdom and life-tools on offer from directors, choreographer…