Click here to read reviewer Luan Gaines' take on The Burn Palace.
Steven Dobyns' The Burn Palace moves along like a slow-burning fuse: it creeps and inches forward--until the final few pages, when everything explodes. Instead of dumping a lot of creepiness and scary stuff on you all at once, the writer spreads it over over the course of the book and then scares the breath out of you during the last chapter.
What makes this tale so scary is that it's all believable. A baby goes missing, and in its place
lies a snake. A cat gets hung from a front porch, and Satanists gather in midnight
Masses.
Think Nathaniel Hawthorne and Stephen King, another pair of writers who know how to terrorize readers with the strange happenings in a small New England town. The Burn Palace will scare you and make you wonder if it's happening in your own town or city. Dobyns shows you where evil truly resides: right in front of your face.