Synopses & Reviews
The Office meets Stephen King in this witty and spine-tingling horror-comedy, dressed up with holiday tinsel and set during the horror publishing boom of the '80s, by New York Times best-selling author Andrew Shaffer.
Out of work for months, Lussi Meyer is desperate to work anywhere in publishing. Prestigious Blackwood-Patterson isn't the perfect fit, but a bizarre set of circumstances leads to her hire and a firm mandate: Lussi must find the next horror superstar to compete with Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Peter Straub. It's the '80s, after all, and horror is the hottest genre in the industry.
But as soon as she arrives, Lussi finds herself the target of mean-spirited pranks by her coworkers, who clearly don't want her there. The hazing reaches its peak during the company's annual Secret Santa gift exchange, when Lussi receives a strange gift that she recognizes but doesn't understand.
Suddenly, her coworkers begin falling victim to a series of horrific accidents, and Lussi suspects her gift is involved somehow. With the help of her former author Fabien Nightingale, Lussi must track down her anonymous Secret Santa and figure out the true meaning of the mysterious object in her possession before it destroys the company — and possesses her.
Review
"Writing with a biting, dry wit, Shaffer blends old school, B-movie gore and sharp send-ups of office politics and the publishing industry. Fans of classic slasher novels will revel in this blood-soaked romp." — Publishers Weekly
Review
"[A] devilishly farcical ode to horror novels and publishing in general....Anyone who ventures into this snarky, dark novel will never look at a holiday gift exchange the same way again." — Booklist
Review
"A touch of the supernatural, malefic colleagues and plenty of eccentricity." — The Washington Post
About the Author
Andrew Shaffer is the New York Times best-selling author of Quirk's Obama/Biden Mystery series, the satirical thriller The Day of the Donald: Trump Trumps America, and the Goodreads Choice semifinalist Fifty Shames of Earl Grey: A Parody, among other humorous fiction and nonfiction books for HarperCollins and Penguin Random House. He lives in Kentucky with his wife, the author Tiffany Reisz.