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Oxrun Station #3
The Last Call of Mourning
Upon returning home to Oxrun Station from travelling Europe, Cynthia Yarrow notices that her family has changed. Her Mother cuts herself but does not bleed. Her Father lay dead before her eyes but is alright just hours later. Cynthia's suspicions lie with her family's new doctor, Dr. Kraylin. With her friend from years back, Ed, Cynthia must solve this mystery or die trying.
281 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1979
3 people are currently reading
251 people want to read
About the author
Charles L. Grant
309 books261 followersCharles Lewis Grant was a novelist and short story writer specializing in what he called "dark fantasy" and "quiet horror." He also wrote under the pseudonyms of Geoffrey Marsh, Lionel Fenn, Simon Lake, Felicia Andrews, and Deborah Lewis.
Grant won a World Fantasy Award for his novella collection Nightmare Seasons, a Nebula Award in 1976 for his short story "A Crowd of Shadows", and another Nebula Award in 1978 for his novella "A Glow of Candles, a Unicorn's Eye," the latter telling of an actor's dilemma in a post-literate future. Grant also edited the award winning Shadows anthology, running eleven volumes from 1978-1991. Contributors include Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, R.A. Lafferty, Avram Davidson, and Steve Rasnic and Melanie Tem. Grant was a former Executive Secretary and Eastern Regional Director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and president of the Horror Writers Association.
Grant won a World Fantasy Award for his novella collection Nightmare Seasons, a Nebula Award in 1976 for his short story "A Crowd of Shadows", and another Nebula Award in 1978 for his novella "A Glow of Candles, a Unicorn's Eye," the latter telling of an actor's dilemma in a post-literate future. Grant also edited the award winning Shadows anthology, running eleven volumes from 1978-1991. Contributors include Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, R.A. Lafferty, Avram Davidson, and Steve Rasnic and Melanie Tem. Grant was a former Executive Secretary and Eastern Regional Director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and president of the Horror Writers Association.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
June 24, 2024
This was definitely a slow burn. I was worried at one point in the middle that it wasn’t going to redeem itself by the end, but I was wrong! The ending very much caught me off guard and left me satisfied. This was solid, especially if you like the nostalgic feel of a story set in the late 1970’s (which I really enjoy). I’m good with 4/5 slow burn stars here.
October 12, 2015
About 3.5; there's something about Grant's work that more often than not keeps me from wholly embracing it while at the same time possessing a certain je ne sais quoi that keeps me returning to his books.
September 8, 2015
If you're in the mood to kick back and relax with a slower building story, Charles Grant is for you. Although a part of his Oxrun Station series, you certainly don't have to read them in order (though it's kind of fun to see a reference here and there to a character or setting from a previous boo, but such references are not critical to the story at hand).
Personally, the main character Cynthia "Cyd" gets on my nerves as any pretentious rich little brat who likes spending daddy's money would. But she grew on me and I still enjoyed the story (even with me shouting at her to stay one full day at work....geez). This book is lots of fun if you go for Charles Grant's style of slowly developing his characters and settings, while dropping spooky events which build in crescendo. But it didn't scare me too much or force me to beg the other half about keeping the lots on all night. And the spooky parts didn't wow me as much as Grant's other stories. But you know, I was entertained and turned the pages pretty quickly, If you know you like 'quiet' horror, this is a good read....just don't start your Grant collection with this one.
Personally, the main character Cynthia "Cyd" gets on my nerves as any pretentious rich little brat who likes spending daddy's money would. But she grew on me and I still enjoyed the story (even with me shouting at her to stay one full day at work....geez). This book is lots of fun if you go for Charles Grant's style of slowly developing his characters and settings, while dropping spooky events which build in crescendo. But it didn't scare me too much or force me to beg the other half about keeping the lots on all night. And the spooky parts didn't wow me as much as Grant's other stories. But you know, I was entertained and turned the pages pretty quickly, If you know you like 'quiet' horror, this is a good read....just don't start your Grant collection with this one.
June 7, 2014
As you can see, vacation has been productive! A classic Charles Grant novel with a classic ending! Not spam: I found SHELVES of these classics and others at the BEST USED BOOKSTORE EVER here in Flint, MI: Jelly Beans. Here's their URL: http://www.jellybeansonline.com/. Check them out!
July 29, 2016
Oxrun Station must be an interesting place to live. Whatever forces of the supernatural exist, they're making quite an effort to break through and take over that town. That people choose to remain there from one book to another is, frankly, astounding. I'm not sure I would have the wherewithal to stick around a place that was trying that hard to get rid of all the people living there.
This time around, Cynthia "Cyd" Yarrow has returned from an extended trip to Europe, and as she settles back into her home with her parents and siblings, odd things start to happen. Her mother takes a big fall, but has no injuries, other than a bloodless cut. Her father appears to be dead one evening, but the next day he's up and moving around like nothing happened. Valuables go missing, and no one seems to care. All of it together adds up to a creepy atmosphere that, for the first time in a Grant novel, pays off by the end.
Of all the Grant novels I've read so far, this one has the closest structure to a traditional novel. It doesn't end quite as abruptly as the previous four, and there's more of an explanation given as to why events unfolded like they did. There's more closure to the conclusion, which I prefer to the way his previous books ended. That's not to say that Grant doesn't make the effort to include a twist ending similar to what he's done before, but at least this time we get more of a reason why everything happened. The rest, though, is the usual Grant style, with a slow build-up to the end of the story, and with the same sorts of characters populating it.
I read an e-book edition of the book that was included in a collection titled A Haunting of Horrors, Vol. 2, and the formatting was terrible. There were certain words and passages that were italicized that didn't make much sense to be that way, missing periods, extraneous commas, and the like. There was even at least one page missing, with one sentence merging perfectly with another, but going from narrative to dialogue at some point in the middle, and taking me from one location to another at the same time. I don't know if the standalone e-book does the same thing, but they're published by the same company, so be forewarned. I don't think I missed too much of the story in that jump, but it was annoying, to say the least.
At this point in his career, Grant had established himself as a writer, and was already being known as a master of his so-called "quiet horror". With this book, though, I think he started to veer back toward more traditional storytelling, just with his unique style. That's my guess, at least; I guess future readings of his books will prove me right or wrong.
This time around, Cynthia "Cyd" Yarrow has returned from an extended trip to Europe, and as she settles back into her home with her parents and siblings, odd things start to happen. Her mother takes a big fall, but has no injuries, other than a bloodless cut. Her father appears to be dead one evening, but the next day he's up and moving around like nothing happened. Valuables go missing, and no one seems to care. All of it together adds up to a creepy atmosphere that, for the first time in a Grant novel, pays off by the end.
Of all the Grant novels I've read so far, this one has the closest structure to a traditional novel. It doesn't end quite as abruptly as the previous four, and there's more of an explanation given as to why events unfolded like they did. There's more closure to the conclusion, which I prefer to the way his previous books ended. That's not to say that Grant doesn't make the effort to include a twist ending similar to what he's done before, but at least this time we get more of a reason why everything happened. The rest, though, is the usual Grant style, with a slow build-up to the end of the story, and with the same sorts of characters populating it.
I read an e-book edition of the book that was included in a collection titled A Haunting of Horrors, Vol. 2, and the formatting was terrible. There were certain words and passages that were italicized that didn't make much sense to be that way, missing periods, extraneous commas, and the like. There was even at least one page missing, with one sentence merging perfectly with another, but going from narrative to dialogue at some point in the middle, and taking me from one location to another at the same time. I don't know if the standalone e-book does the same thing, but they're published by the same company, so be forewarned. I don't think I missed too much of the story in that jump, but it was annoying, to say the least.
At this point in his career, Grant had established himself as a writer, and was already being known as a master of his so-called "quiet horror". With this book, though, I think he started to veer back toward more traditional storytelling, just with his unique style. That's my guess, at least; I guess future readings of his books will prove me right or wrong.
May 2, 2017
I love his horror fiction!
August 11, 2012
Found this in an old box of my stuff at my parents'
February 20, 2020
Love it! A solid classic horror!
August 3, 2024
”… and had she known that she had placed a dead crow in a towel, in a bag, and had been forced to beat it with a tire iron in the car.”
By now, I’m pretty sure that when it comes to women, writer Charles L. Grant has a type. The almost-thirty, slightly neurotic, career-oriented, chaste, and ‘fumbling for a man’ type that feel like they’ve fallen straight from a Brontë novel into the off-kilter environs of haunted Oxrun Station. For The Last Call of Mourning (the third book in the series of so-far unconnected novels set in the strange little town), we have aspiring bookseller Cynthia ‘Cyd’ Yarrow returning home after a European sabbatical only to find her formerly wealthy family in dire financial straits and oddly ‘touched.’
This one is about as good as first two books in the series -- which is to say even allowing for the book’s age -- hits the fair to middling mark at best. Admittedly, this one has a bit of a meaner streak than the prior two novels – which bolsters things a bit – and the culminating confrontation between Cyd and her family is genuinely creepy. I can also live with the finishing ‘twist’ (which forty years after publication won’t be much of a twist to most horror readers), but it still offers a little squirm that keeps this one from finishing too happily.
The challenge is that Grant’s protagonist feels nearly identical to the ladies from the first two books as does the game of footsie being played with potential paramour Edward. It feels (either dated or dopey) that the two can barely hazard a kiss let alone slip between the sheets even with death leering over their shoulders. The early supernatural horrors also aren’t much: a stalking limousine and (sorry to spoil this one) a one-winged crow (and it flies … with ONE wing)! Also, the antagonist gets magic powers because he just thinks about it … really hard? Again … dopey or dated … I’m not sure which … but it also doesn’t help that Cyd’s ‘steps to opening her bookstore’ gets about equal page time to any actual horrors.
Like Cyd, it might be time for me to take a break from Oxrun Station. As little bits of horror history, these books aren’t bad, but from an entertainment perspective, the chills are feeling a little lukewarm and the plots a bit predictable.
Taking the pike out of town on this series for a bit.
May 16, 2022
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 to The Last Call of Mourning by Charles L. Grant
Through this book I’ve fallen even more in love with Grant’s writing. It is subtle and atmospheric, evoking old story horror feels that I love. Having read the first two books in the Oxrun Station, and enjoying both, I noticed a unique difference in his writing style with this book. While the technology of the world within this book could be described as setting the story in the 1980s its written in such a old fashioned style that it makes it feel like a story set in the 19th century. It is wonderful seductive.
Once again the strangeness of Oxrun Station is at play. Cyd Yarrow has returned after a year of travel to discover things aren’t quite as she remembers in her hometown, maybe it’s because her travels are done and she doesn’t know what to do with her life but her family is acting odd. The Yarrow name seemed to have wilted in her absence, yet none of her family seemed concerned. Nor are they concerned about the mysterious car that continues to hunt Cyd whenever she goes.
What Grant unfolds here is a magnificent twisting horror thriller where the reader is never sure what is going on until the final reveal. And it’s one that devastates right up until the final sentence. One of the best reads I’ve read this year. Grant makes Cyd - another of his spectacular character - relatable despite her privileged lifestyle, offering a unique look in Oxrun Station’s society as his previous protagonist have always been people on the outside of the town’s high society. It’s a bold move, and in the hands of a lesser writer it would be hard to find that relatability with Cyd, yet Grant pulls it off. I can’t wait to read more of his work.
Through this book I’ve fallen even more in love with Grant’s writing. It is subtle and atmospheric, evoking old story horror feels that I love. Having read the first two books in the Oxrun Station, and enjoying both, I noticed a unique difference in his writing style with this book. While the technology of the world within this book could be described as setting the story in the 1980s its written in such a old fashioned style that it makes it feel like a story set in the 19th century. It is wonderful seductive.
Once again the strangeness of Oxrun Station is at play. Cyd Yarrow has returned after a year of travel to discover things aren’t quite as she remembers in her hometown, maybe it’s because her travels are done and she doesn’t know what to do with her life but her family is acting odd. The Yarrow name seemed to have wilted in her absence, yet none of her family seemed concerned. Nor are they concerned about the mysterious car that continues to hunt Cyd whenever she goes.
What Grant unfolds here is a magnificent twisting horror thriller where the reader is never sure what is going on until the final reveal. And it’s one that devastates right up until the final sentence. One of the best reads I’ve read this year. Grant makes Cyd - another of his spectacular character - relatable despite her privileged lifestyle, offering a unique look in Oxrun Station’s society as his previous protagonist have always been people on the outside of the town’s high society. It’s a bold move, and in the hands of a lesser writer it would be hard to find that relatability with Cyd, yet Grant pulls it off. I can’t wait to read more of his work.
June 17, 2023
The first two Oxrun Station books were compelling, engrossing, but had slightly lackluster endings. This one, number three, was a bit more slow and meandering, but nailed the dismount. The last page especially was just dynamite. It's so funny how just a page here or there can either destroy or redeem a book.
Cyd comes home from a long stay in Europe and moves back in with her family. She senses right away that something...isn't right. With four Charles Grant books under my belt, at this point I can definitely say that he excels at writing unheimlich. It's not big, showy, spoo-oo-ooky horror. It's atmospheric, creeping, oh-so-slowly growing horror, that awful, dawning realization that something has changed, something is different, something is wrong, but you can't figure out what it is.
Cyd comes home from a long stay in Europe and moves back in with her family. She senses right away that something...isn't right. With four Charles Grant books under my belt, at this point I can definitely say that he excels at writing unheimlich. It's not big, showy, spoo-oo-ooky horror. It's atmospheric, creeping, oh-so-slowly growing horror, that awful, dawning realization that something has changed, something is different, something is wrong, but you can't figure out what it is.
September 18, 2023
Charles L Grant - prolific author and editor, responsible for the superior "Shadows" anthologies and the stories of "Oxrun Station in NJ...where nothing appears as it is....
I'm more a fan of his short stories than his longer fiction - but still..Grant's skill with longer fiction can't be denied. I don't know if his longer fiction could be marketed today as horror or fantasy - when it seems to me to have more in common with gothic romance....the kind where a young damsel is fleeing the castle...her tormentors in hot pursuit.....
All that being said - if you're a fan of quiet horror...you need look no further than Charles Grant...
Jeff McIntosh
I'm more a fan of his short stories than his longer fiction - but still..Grant's skill with longer fiction can't be denied. I don't know if his longer fiction could be marketed today as horror or fantasy - when it seems to me to have more in common with gothic romance....the kind where a young damsel is fleeing the castle...her tormentors in hot pursuit.....
All that being said - if you're a fan of quiet horror...you need look no further than Charles Grant...
Jeff McIntosh
June 15, 2019
These are the books I read in the early eighties when there was a big boom in horror. Grant deals with atmosphere mostly. A nice journey going back in time.
November 16, 2023
My third visit to this strange little town named Oxrun Station.
This was a pretty good read although not a lot seemed to happen I enjoyed it nonetheless
This was a pretty good read although not a lot seemed to happen I enjoyed it nonetheless
June 7, 2024
Don't understand such low scores. But I really enjoyed the story. Perhaps not many folk enjoy quiet horror.
October 3, 2024
Sexy small town bookstore owner thwarts mad scientist who has murdered her family only to resurrect them for his own predictably nefarious purposes...
September 26, 2016
A classic-feeling ghost/horror story.
October 20, 2016
Apanhei Charles L. Grant após um artigo na Lovecraft Magazine que comparava este autor a Ray Bradbury. Demorei a perceber porquê. Num aspecto, a similaridade era óbvia. Grant também partilhava daquele olhar entre o naturalista, o nostálgico e o fantasista sobre a mitografia da small town americana, que Bradbury tão bem sabia explorar. Mas falta-lhe a leveza de linguagem. Tão absorvido fica pelas idiossincrasias das personagens caricaturais que a história passa demasiadas vezes para segundo plano. De tal forma que quando se desenrola o novelo e a história, com aquele volteio final tão típico da ficção clássica de terror, nos surpreende é já um pouco tarde demais para nos agarrar ao livro.
Regressada do seu grand tour pela Europa, a jovem herdeira de uma família venerável de uma pequena cidade da Nova Inglaterra sente que algo não vai bem. Procura-se a si própria, tentando descobrir-se, e funda um pequeno negócio para escapar ao destino expectável de jovem herdeira de família decadente. Mas este não é um romance sobre auto-descobertas de personalidade. Há mesmo algo que não está bem com a sua família. O mistério - aviso, big spoiler, mas dificilmente irão ler este livro, envolve um médico misterioso, que também domina artes arcanas, que se financia transformando os seus pacientes numa espécie de zombies. Mata-os, mas anima-os com vida e uma parte da sua personalidade pessoal. O final é puro terror clássico, com a jovem herdeira a aperceber-se que viveu seis meses junto de mortos vivos, e que até o seu eterno pretendente na terra talvez também seja um morto-vivo.
Não sendo um livro extraordinário, tem um elemento curioso. Algo na ambiência evocada perdura após a leitura, apesar de um estilo que não agarra muito quem lê. Neste aspecto, no deixar algo das icongrafias literárias na mente do leitor, a comparação com Bradbury também é válida.
Regressada do seu grand tour pela Europa, a jovem herdeira de uma família venerável de uma pequena cidade da Nova Inglaterra sente que algo não vai bem. Procura-se a si própria, tentando descobrir-se, e funda um pequeno negócio para escapar ao destino expectável de jovem herdeira de família decadente. Mas este não é um romance sobre auto-descobertas de personalidade. Há mesmo algo que não está bem com a sua família. O mistério - aviso, big spoiler, mas dificilmente irão ler este livro, envolve um médico misterioso, que também domina artes arcanas, que se financia transformando os seus pacientes numa espécie de zombies. Mata-os, mas anima-os com vida e uma parte da sua personalidade pessoal. O final é puro terror clássico, com a jovem herdeira a aperceber-se que viveu seis meses junto de mortos vivos, e que até o seu eterno pretendente na terra talvez também seja um morto-vivo.
Não sendo um livro extraordinário, tem um elemento curioso. Algo na ambiência evocada perdura após a leitura, apesar de um estilo que não agarra muito quem lê. Neste aspecto, no deixar algo das icongrafias literárias na mente do leitor, a comparação com Bradbury também é válida.
September 21, 2016
I've seen this book on my sister's shelves for years and all of a sudden I read the summary and was like "Why don't I try this book out." Oh my word, I am SOO glad I did. I've never read any of Charles. L Grant's novels and I am thoroughly impressed.
I was engrossed the whole time trying to figure out the mystery and it was one turn after another. I couldn't put it down. I gave the book back to my sister and found out she hadn't finished the book. I told her to read it as soon as she could. I told her she would never expect the ending. I am purchasing my own copy of the book asap.
Definitely recommend it :)
I was engrossed the whole time trying to figure out the mystery and it was one turn after another. I couldn't put it down. I gave the book back to my sister and found out she hadn't finished the book. I told her to read it as soon as she could. I told her she would never expect the ending. I am purchasing my own copy of the book asap.
Definitely recommend it :)
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews