Usher's Passing

Poe's classic tale lives on in this gothic novel of ancestral madness in the mountains of modern-day North Carolina, from a New York Times –bestselling author. Ever since Edgar Allan Poe looted a family's ignoble secret history for his classic story "The Fall of the House of Usher," living in the shadow of that sick dynasty has been an inescapable scourge for generations of Usher descendants. But not for horror novelist Rix Usher. Years ago, he fled the isolated family estate of Usherland in the menacing North Carolina hills to pursue his writing career. He promised never to return. But his father's impending death has brought Rix back home to assume the role of Usher patriarch—and face his worst fears. His arrival forces him to confront a devious and impassive family and his vulnerable sister's slow descent into insanity. Stirring memories of the grim folktales born out of the surrounding Briartop Mountains and the terrifying legends of missing children, Rix knows that in the dark, twisted corridors of Usherland, that dreadful something he saw as a young boy is still there. It's waiting for him, as decayed and undying as the Usher heritage, and more depraved than anything Poe could have imagined. This eerie novel by the Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Swan Song and Boy's Life is "a frightening pleasure" and a worthy tribute to the master who inspired it ( St. Louis Post-Dispatch ). A struggling author must confront the dreadful secrets of his famous family{u2019}s past Two men argue in the low light of one of nineteenth-century New York{u2019}s vilest bars. One is an aristocrat, clearly slumming, while the other, in appearance no better than the gutter-trash around him, is the finest author of his age. The wealthy man is Hudson Usher, come to berate Edgar Allen Poe for using Usher{u2019}s family history as fodder for his most famous story. The house of Usher has not fallen, Hudson boasts. It will endure into the centuries. One hundred and fifty years later, the Usher line persists. The newest heir is Rix Usher, a hack horror writer whose ailing father has just called him back to the family{u2019}s North Carolina estate. To become the new Usher patriarch, Rix must confront a Gothic mystery more twisted than anything even Poe could have imagined Reluctant to return home, Rix Usher, heir to the notorious House of Usher, nonetheless takes over ownership from his dying father and soon learns the house's legacy of depravity and bloodshed