"HUSK may be Zeltserman’s best book to date"

Bookreporter on HUSK:"HUSK may be Zeltserman’s best book to date.... Many of the twists and turns are saved for the final third of the novel, but they come hard, fast and heavy, right up to the last sentence, which is one of the best I have read this year." You can read the entire review here.

With CRUEL, 20 novels published!

With CRUEL being published on Sept. 18th, I've now published 20 novels, with 3 more in the pipeline!

• Fast Lane (2004)
• Bad Thoughts (2007)
• Small Crimes (2008), selected by NPR as one of the 5 best crime and mystery novels of 2008 and the Washington Post as one of the best books of the year. Now a Netflix film.
• Bad Karma (2009)
• Pariah (2009), selected by the Washington Post as one of the best books of 2009.
• Killer (2010)
• The Caretaker of Lorne Field (2010), short listed by ALA for best horror novel of 2010 and Black Quill Nominee for Best Dark Genre novel of 2010.
• Outsourced (2011)
• Blood Crimes (2011)
• Dying Memories (2011)
• Julius Katz and Archie (2011)
• A Killer's Essence (2011)
• Monster: A novel of Frankenstein (2012), selected by Booklist for their 2013 list of top 10 horror novels and WBUR for their favorite novels of 2012
• The Boy Who Killed Demons (2014)
• The Interloper (2014)
• Deranged (written as Jacob Stone, 2017)
• Crazed (written as Jacob Stone, 2017)
• Malicious (written as Jacob Stone, 2018)
• Husk (2018)
• Cruel (written as Jacob Stone, 2018)

Want a free copy of CRUEL?

“Dave Zeltserman is one of the best suspense writers in the business, and his Jacob Stone thrillers are not to be missed.” Steve Hamilton

"Jacob Stone is equal parts Thomas Harris, Michael Connelly, Jo Nesbo, and Stephen King. CRUEL will leave you shaking . . . with fear, excitement, and the uncontrollable compulsion to keep on reading.” Lee Goldberg, #1 New York Times bestselling author of True Fiction
  
Rarely is an author so skilled at portraying such unremitting evil and the poignant, human side of his characters in a single tale.” Jeffery Deaver

My 4th Morris Brick crime thriller CRUEL will be out Sept. 18th and I'll be giving away ebook copies to the first 10 fans of the series who point me to a review they have posted on Amazon for book #3 MALICIOUS.

 

HUSK: An American Cannibal Love Story

My working title for HUSK was 'American Cannibal: A Love Story', and that fit the book perfectly, but as former detective Adrian Monk would say, heres's the thing, nobody would've published the book if I kept that title. The editors who responded to my queries all came back with something along the lines of 'no thanks, I don't do cannibals.' And so I flipped a coin between using HUSK and THE CRAVINGS, and the coin came up heads. It wasn't until I changed the title that I had editors willing to look at it. After selling the book, I suggested that we go back to my original title, and my publisher rightfully decided that as perfect as that title might be, they wouldn't sell many copies with it.

HUSK is certainly a horror novel, albeit a very unusual and different one. A sense of dread permeates the book. It's also in some ways very noirish. As Just A Guy Who Likes To Read writes about it: "There is a simmering danger lurking around every corner; an omnipresent threat of violence and bloodletting bubbling away through each chapter as Charlie Husk, a character like no other, struggles with the person he is and the person he wants to be." Horror is always at the edges until it's front and center.  But at the same time at its core is a love story. A very unusual one.

Publishing day for my horror novel HUSK!

"Tender, brutal, fantastic, and vibrantly real. A unique and splendid novel" Booklist, starred review

“Dave Zeltserman’s Husk is a compelling, quirky, twisty, smart, page-turner mix of horror, satire, and even a little romance with (yeah, I’ll say it) bite. A brutal love story perfect for our dark times.” Paul Tremblay, author of Cabin at the End of the World

"There is a simmering danger lurking around every corner; an omnipresent threat of violence and bloodletting bubbling away through each chapter as Charlie Husk, a character like no other, struggles with the person he is and the person he wants to be." Just A Guy Who Likes To Read

Today is publishing day for my latest horror novel HUSK and to celebrate, I have a short interview up on The Big Thrill.

First paragraph:

Labor Day weekend is always a good time to pick up students hitchhiking, but that wasn’t why I pulled into the rest stop on the Massachusetts Turnpike. While I had fourteen empty burlap sacks in the back of the van that needed to be filled before heading back home, along with more than enough rope and gags to take care of things, I didn’t expect to be picking up any of them here. While there’s always the chance of finding a hitchhiker at a place like this, it’s a small one and I was expecting that most of the stragglers I’d be getting would be in cities off the Turnpike. Hartford, Bridgeport, and if need be, New Haven. For this trip I hoped to get mostly students. They were generally healthier and leaner than the usual types – the prostitutes, drifters, homeless, and other such stragglers that I’d often have to collect. Students also tended to carry more books, clothes, and money on them than those others, all of which was good to bring back to the homestead. If I ended up needing those others to fill up the back of the van, I would. But I was hoping for mostly students.