Off Season

They had Hunted every animal but there was no flesh like man's . . . Welcome to Jack Ketchum's ferocious and unforgettable first novel, Off Season. Originally published in 1981, Off Season was a defining moment of contemporary horror fiction, an instant classic whose impact on the writing and reading of horror continues today... ...when I read Off Season, I knew that its writer was different; that he was working from that raw and risky perspective known as personal vision, and that he had written a novel that was his own, and not what a publisher wanted or expected. Stocked in the shadows of bestsellers and a blur of Stephen King wannabes, Off Season was issued as a paperback original by Ballantine -- a publisher who has never shown much enthusiasm for the fiction of fear. The cover was a minimalist triumph, its title embossed in black on black, stained with a red thread of blood. The author's name -- a pseudonym -- was reported in white block capital letters, and the top of the cover announced:"THE ULTIMATE HORROR NOVEL." The hyperbole was deserved. Off Season was the genuine article, its horror insistent, visceral, and disturbing.-- From the Introduction to Off Season: Unexpurgated by Douglas E. Winter Fiction,Horror September. A beautiful New York editor retreats to a lonely cabin on a hill in the quiet Maine beach town of Dead River—off season— awaiting her sister and friends. Nearby, a savage human family with a taste for flesh lurks in the darkening woods, watching, waiting for the moon to rise and night to fall...And before too many hours pass, five civilized, sophisticated people and one tired old country sheriff will learn just how primitive we all are beneath the surface...and that there are no limits at all to the will to survive. A family of savage murderers preys on unsuspecting tourists on a small island off the coast of Maine