Awards
Winner of the 2001 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel by the Horror Writer's Association
Synopses & Reviews
It's a hot August morning in 1963. All over the rural town of Grandville, tacked to power poles and trees, taped to store windows, flyers have appeared announcing the one-night-only performance of The Traveling Vampire Show. The promised highlight of the show is the gorgeous Valeria, the only living vampire in captivity.
For three local teenagers, two boys and a girl, this is a show they can't miss. Even though the flyers say no one under eighteen will be admitted, they're determined to find a way. What follows is a story of friendship and courage, temptation and terror, when three friends go where they shouldn't go, and find much more than they ever expected.
Review
"Laymon lets out all the stops in typically ferocious fashion. The Traveling Vampire Show contains some of the wisdom of King's The Body or Robert R. McCammon's Boy's Life, but the book belongs wholly to Laymon, who with his trademark squeaky-clean yet sensual prose, high narrative drive, and pitch-dark sense of humor, has crafted a horror tale that's not only emotionally true but also scary and, above all, fun." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"If, like me, you consider Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes an American classic, you are in for a real treat. This book will put you in the same vicarious world that no author has entered since the master." Denver Rocky Mountain News
Review
"If you've missed Laymon, you've missed a treat." Stephen King
Review
"Although the protagonists are high school age, this novel is so replete with graphic sexual situations and violence that it would not be suitable for young adult collections. It is, however, a well-written story that will appeal to fans of horror fiction." Library Journal
Synopsis
Three teenagers are determined to get in to see the Traveling Vampire Show when it arrives in their town in the summer of 1963. The promised highlight of the show is Valeria, the only living vampire in captivity. The teens go where they shouldn't, but they find much more than they ever expected.
About the Author
Richard Laymon was born in Chicago in 1947. He grew up in California and has a BA in English Literature from Willamette University, Oregon, and an MA from Loyola University, Los Angeles. He has worked as a schoolteacher, a librarian, and as a report writer for a law firm.
Apart from his novels, he has published more than sixty short stories in magazines such as Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock, and Cavalier, and in anthologies including Modern Masters of Horror, The Second Black Lizard Anthology of Crime, and Night Visions 7. His novel Flesh was named Best Horror Novel of 1988 by Science Fiction Chronicle and also shortlisted for the prestigious Bram Stoker Award, as was Funland.
Richard Laymon is the author of more than thirty acclaimed novels, including The Cellar, The Stake, Savage, Quake, Island, and Body Rides.
Richard died on February 14, 2001.