Synopses & Reviews
For decades, the faded, rural upstate New York village has lain dormant--until it is startlingly stirred to life wen, one by one, three young girls vanish...
Nightmare are turned into horrifying reality when their corpses are found, brutally murdered, each missing their left hand...
Now, as the search for a madman gets underway, suspicion shrouds the quiet streets of Aurelius when its residents soon realize that monster lives amongst them...
But no even prayers can save their loved ones from the rage of a twisted mind who has only just begun his slaughter...
Review
"The ostensible virtues of small towns are well known—the warmth and friendliness of close neighbors, the unhurried pace of life, the sense of a caring and safe community. The flipside of this Eden is what sends thousands of young people fleeing to the cities each year: the lack of stimulation, the sameness of each day, the nosiness of those caring neighbors. In this novel in which three young girls disappear in a small town in upstate New York, Stephen Dobyns explores how fear and suspicion turn the idyllic into the nightmarish as everyone becomes a suspect and the slightest deviation from what is considered normal is grounds for attack. More than the killer is unmasked in this fascinating and grim story." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Review
"Very rich, very scary, very satisfying."--
Stephen King"A macabre version of Our Town...Superb."--The Washington Post Book World
"The creepiness mounts with Hitchcockian intensity; the bloody conclusion is worth the wait."--The Chicago Tribune
:Tantalizingly sinister...Dobyns hooks us from the very first sentence." --People
"It's unlikely there will be a better novel this season than The Church of Dead Girls." --New York Daily News
About the Author
Stephen Dobyns is the author of nineteen novels, nine collections of poetry, and the best-selling "Saratoga" mystery series. Briefly a reporter for
The Detroit News, Dobyns has been a professor of English, creative writing, and poetry since 1968 and has taught at Syracuse University, the University of Iowa, and Brandeis University, among others. He lives in Boston with his wife and three children.