Guests

by Bentley Little

When Gregory Tomasov wins the lottery and moves his family out of their city in Southern California and back to his home town in Arizona, he finds a community plagued by uninvited guests. These guests cannot be seen and cannot be heard. Neither can they be stopped.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Audiobook, Paranormal, Supernatural, Ghosts, Fantasy

438 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Bentley Little is an American author of horror fiction. Publishing an average of a novel a year since 1990, Little avoids publicity and rarely does promotional work or interviews for his writing.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

A family of Russian origin moves back to the small town of their youth. Coming from California they want to raise their children on the countryside. Step by step the family is falling apart. Murders occur in the quiet place. An ancient evil, a demon, seems to be in this town. Can it be expelled? Can the family be saved? The key seems to be in the past and how the inhabitants acted towards Russiantown. Bentley Little comes up with a page turning novel of demonic evil here. The characters are well crafted and the eerie factor is absolutely top notch (the banja for instance). Of course you will also find some hard violence and the final is nail biting. This is the stuff nightmares are from. Highly recommended!

[Dirk Grobbelaar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disclaimer Full Disclosure:

I read a book by John Saul titled The Right Hand of Evil this year. Well, the below review is basically a copy and paste of my review for that book (yes, literally). Why? Well, the same really applies. They’re both books by fairly established horror writers doing what they do best. Both have done better; both have done worse. These books are, for the authors, and for the genre, sort of middle-of-the-road. That’s to say, they’re dependable and enjoyable enough (especially if you tend to binge read horror) but they’re not necessarily groundbreaking. Heck, in this specific instance, there are even some similarities in the setting and set-up of the novels.

And now, on to….

Lazy review

Well, this does exactly what it sets out to do. Little is one of those writers whose name has become synonymous with horror. It’s what he does. As such, he’s written this kind of thing quite a few times, and in some cases, better. It’s the sort of standard horror fare that horror aficionados can finish in one sitting and that reads like the plot of any 80s or 90s supernatural horror flick. Is that a bad thing? No, if you like small town horror stories and you’ve already read all the really good ones ('Salem's Lot, Ghost Story et al and then some), then books like these are where you’ll go next; there are hundreds of them from dozens of authors and there is definitely a place for them.

If you’re a casual reader, or only entering the horror genre, there are certainly better places to start, even elsewhere in Little’s catalog. But if you eat up horror stories like popcorn this will fill that empty spot between your previous and your next horror novel (which will no doubt be the same kind of thing) nicely. Because, let’s face it, when the hunger is upon you, you need your fix.

[Anita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another spectacular tale of terror by the master, Bentley Little. Liked this one very much. Loved the ending, where after I finished the book I played a game of "What would you have done" with myself. What makes Little so good is his ability to craft terrific characters and scenarios that are just so Main Street, U.S.A., and turn them slowly into your absolute worst nightmare. Horrors that are very outlandish, yet so spine chillingly real. I have a hard time reading his books while in public as I have some pretty tense emotional reactions about characters and events when I read his books.

[Richard K. Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now this is why I read HORROR! All the scares, gore, suspense, demons ghosts and non stop page flipping!! Bentley Little's early works we incomparable to anything else!

Here is a link to my video review of this book from my YouTube Channel; AreYouIntoHorror here:
https://youtu.be/GF-7IQWZoDI


Published in 2000 by Signet Books, 'The Town' is one hell of a scary and gross Haunted house/town page turner! As with all horror authors (in my personal opinion) I wall always believe that their earliest works always are and will be their best and most horrifying and scary! As Little became a mainstream name in horror fiction, he just quit turning out the knock you on your ass nightmare inducing books, but 'The Town' is NOT one of those!

After winning the California State Lottery for millions, Gregory Tomasov and his wife Julia move their family of 3 kids; Sasha, Adam and Theo and Gregs mother, Agafia to McGuane Arizona for the quieter life, and to go back to the family's Russian roots. This was the biggest mistake they could have made.

Upon leaving California and getting on the road, Greg forgets to 'invite the "Owner of The House, Jedushka Di Muvedushka" (which is one of if not the scariest of characters to ever cross the pages of horror fiction!! And i found out that there are Russian people that grew up hearing these stories about this 'boogey man of sorts' to scare the little ones) to come along with them. Greg responds to his mother with, 'Mother you really do not believe in all that mumbo jumbo, do you? Of course! You must invite and bring him along to protect you and your family in their new home, and he will keep the Devil away from all of us. Well, Greg does not do what his mother recommended, get ready for the Ghosts, demons, and all else scary things from the pits of Hell to invade the small town of McGuane Arizona!!
Once the family gets back to McGuane, the middle son Adam, notices that the people are so different than people were in California. Everyone is more quiet, and kind of rude to the local Russian 'Molokans'. This is their religion beliefs, such as Mormans or Catholics. However the local town people are not friendly to the Tomasovs.....at first. Greg is reunited with his childhood friend that lived and still does in his old childhood home, and he asks Greg why the hell they bought 'the Old Megan Home'? Well, you soon find out what happened in the house, and on the farm that the house sits on, and get ready because Little does not hold back the scares, creepy's and the demonic ghosts and hauntings of the ghosts of the past!

This book is one of my favorites by Little, following his 'Dominion' and 'The House' along with others. This is a fast and horrifying read that opened me up to other cultures that I had no idea about who or what they are, and this made me do some investigating after finishing it. It has been since originally published that I have read it, and it read like it was a first time read. Scary, disgusting, and such an incredible ghost story and haunting, Bentley Little's 'The Town' delivers the scares and true horrors.....and a few teary eyes at the epilogue. But get ready, he does not hold back anything..........Shock! Weird assed horrors such as a church growing long black hair, and then bleeding! An old lady gives birth to a cactus with an infants face that tears her vagina up to all hell! And this is just the beginning, but it is done so in a way that it is not funny or stupidly cheesy, it is very effective. And a warning: Stay out of the Banya!!!!

[Nikolas Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a career punctuated by numerous surreal horror stories, The Town might be Bentley Little's most surreal book of them all--and that says something. Steeped in the Russian spiritualism and mysticism of the Molokan immigrants to the United States and Mexico, Little introduces readers to a religious sect about which most people know little to nothing. I'm well-versed in world spirituality, and even I had little understanding of Molokan philosophy and culture.
When Gregory Tomasov won the California lottery, he didn't necessarily strike it rich. He did earn enough to move his family back to his hometown in rural Arizona, where he believes his children are safer than in Los Angeles. At first, the homecoming seems to work out nicely, though strange occurrences are popping up.
It isn't long before the whole world around them appears to be going mad. It all has something to do with Jedushka di Mudvedushka, the Owner of the House--a Russian superstition--and the banya (bathhouse) on the property where the Tomasovs moved.
Little manages to keep the reader guessing what might come next as he ratchets up the tension and defies expectations at every opportunity. Nothing can be taken for granted as the narrative propels us toward a ghastly and horrific conclusion from which only some will walk away.
David Stifel's narration suitably captures the accents of various characters, and he provides listeners with a thrilling experience while at the same time delivering the narrative with an unusual drawl and cadence that is occasionally off-putting. It works for the story in question, but I'm not sure how much of that was intentionally applied for this audiobook and how much was just the narrator's manner of speaking.

[Stu Corner · Rating 1 out of 5]

Great! If you are into child incest. I'm not...

So what's left to surprise and "Terrify" you here then? Not much!
A cactus baby, evil umbilical cord, evil dwarves, Murderous bible. You get the idea...

Bentley Little needed to hit a certain word count to meet the publisher's requirements, but he only had enough for a novella. So he decided to write filler... And oh boy! does he write a lot of it!
Town gossip, food, lots of tea drinking, conspiracy theories, Christian bashing, philosophy, just to name a few subjects he used to fill this trashpile of a book.

Someone actually used the word "terrifying" in one of the reviews bellow. There's nothing remotely scary in this book. The fakery is flagrant. Stop pretending shitty books are good! PLEASE!

1 Star.

[Cody | CodysBookshelf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Torn between a 3 star and 4 star rating. I guess I will go with 4, as I did enjoy reading this novel and feel 3 is a little unfair.

Bentley Little seems to be a master of making the mundane horrific, and sneaking up on his readers. It is out of the most benign, banal situations and circumstances he wrings true terror. He is also great at challenging expectations: his novels are fairly safe and comfortable until the proverbial fecal matter hits the fan. The Town, my second Bentley book, has these talents on front display.

This is the story of the Tomasovs. Having recently won the California lottery (though they only get one check per year, so it’s not like they’ve got tons of money to burn) and decide to move to the hometown of Gregory, the family patriarch. Said hometown is McGuane, Arizona, a backwater place with only a few stores and a dying population. Having gone from southern California to this place, they must get used to a different way of life. I really enjoyed these parts of the novel; I appreciated seeing things from the point of view of each family member. Adam, the teenage son, was my favorite, as he felt the most fleshed out.

Perhaps it’s because I just read Night Stone, a genuinely scary novel about a family moving to a new house and dealing with malevolent spirits, but this story just felt a little . . . boring, maybe? Nothing in it feels new or exciting. Family moves to small town, mysterious deaths occur, said family becomes convinced their house is haunted, family is blamed by their fellow townspeople for all things that go wrong. It just felt formulaic, that’s all. And the ending was more than a little silly and extremely convoluted — I couldn’t really follow what was happening and found myself skimming.

Still, this is Bentley Little. He has talent and I enjoy his prose. So I will give this 4 stars.

Read for ‘Terror in a Small Town’ for Halloween Bingo.

[Danger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as tight as some of the other Little novels I've read, but it's still full of his excellent worldbuilding, weird humor, and mixture of extreme horror and unpredictable bizarro plot points. Totally fun read.

[Jeremy Bates · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you haven't read him, he's an American horror writer, often overlooked. However, he was discovered by Dean Koontz and praised by Stephen King, which speaks for his talent. For me, some of his titles are too far out there, while others are great. His plots often focus on a bizarre what if, such as The Store (what if your local Walmart-esque store took over your small town, so much so it began to own you, body and soul) or The Association (what if a homeowner's association took over your gated community, so much so they began killing off people who didn't follow the rules). In Guests (later renamed The Town), a pregnant woman gives birth to a cactus, a small church grows hair and bleeds, a man sprouts an umbilical cord and, one by one, residents of a tiny Southwest town die violently. If you like horror, give this one, or any of Little's novels a shot. If it sounds too weird, it probably is for you!

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel was published in England under the title Guests two or three years before it appeared in the U.S. It's a good horror story in the haunted-town tradition with some interesting elements of Russian folklore, and the evils of ethnic/racial prejudice are contrasted well with the supernatural element. On the downside, there are some rather graphic sexual scenes, some involving children, that I suspect will be too much for many readers.

[Adam Light · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a fan of Little's work, and although he seems to be a hit or miss author, I can usually find redeeming qualities in his books that don't quite hit the mark for me. This one was middle of the road for me. It had a great concept, but a lot of its potential was never realized.
Still, there was enough strangeness and plenty of surreal situations to keep me reading until the end.
Not one of his best, but a decent read nonetheless. 3.5 stars.

[Rachel the Page-Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bentley Little is one of my favorite authors, but I still have a few of his books to read. I’ve had this one for over a year, so I decided to finally jump on it! I can see why I kept passing it up, now that I’ve read it. The copy I have is called “The Town”, but it looks like the official title has been changed to “Guests”. I prefer Bentley’s way of making his book titles like Seinfeld episodes! #theassociation #theresort #thestore #thepolicy

In this book, a Russian family living in Southern California won the lottery, and for some reason decided to move to the father’s hometown of McGuane, Arizona. Gregory feels like his kids, Sasha, Adam and Teo, will be better off being raised in the close-knit safety of a small town. His wife, Julie, and his mom, “Babunya”, round out the home.

The family is part of a relatively rare Russian religion, the Molokans. They are pacifists with a lot of superstitions and prayers to ward off evil. They’re definitely going to need help in this town, and this evil all seems to stem an old bathhouse, or “banya”, on their new property. Soon, the town begins to change, along with the people who inhabit it. This small town is quite multicultural, with a Russian, Mormon and Native American population. Each have their own traditions and religious beliefs regarding things of this nature, and they all start to turn - turn into different people, and turn against each other.

My only complaint is that I usually don’t care for the horror sub-genre of religion and/or demonology. Anything haunted can get boring to me. People are much more evil than ghosts/spirits, so writing about it seems like an easy way to explain things. I didn’t care for those parts in the book, which affects my rating, but this is still Bentley and it’s him, as usual, writing a depraved and shocking story. 3.5 stars!

[Teipu · Rating 3 out of 5]

*warning: there will be spoilers*

Little has some veeeery strange ideas.
Murderous bibles? A regrowing umbilical cord that wants to strangle you? a cactus baby? tongue kissing a cow? It's all in here.
As for strange ways to die, Little has outdone himself in The Town.

The rest of the book lacked some oomph, though. There was a lot of foreboding and trying to set the mood, but it was dragged out too long.

I liked that Little picked his supernatural entity from a culture completely unknown to me (molokan russians). Even though it all boils down to some great "Evil", it was nice to read about something other than ghosts or demons.

And one last question: how did Gregory get down from the attic when a ladder blocked the entrance?
Kind of ruined Gregorys murder spree for me.

[Melanie Bouthillette · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I've enjoyed some Little before this one kinda bored me. Too many plot holes imo and just too much blabber and not enough results. This one fell short for me.

[CasualDebris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Please see my full review at Casual Debris.

The Town is structured through a series of episodes involving a number of characters, though centred mainly around Gregory Tomasov and his family. After winning a substantial Los Angeles lottery and as a consequence feeling idle and inconsequential, Tomasov moves his family (wife, three children and practicing Molokan mother) to his childhood home town of McGuane, Arizona. We soon learn that their new home, along with the entire town, is over-run with "uninvited" spirits. The episodic structure does not suit this novel well, as the episodes are often not directly connected to the central idea, and many scenes do little in enhancing or revealing the mystery around the strange occurrences. The novel does have a clear direction yet it has little in the way of plot, and this awkward, clunky format leaves the work wholly uneven.

Some scenes are certainly tense, and we find ourselves climbing up a slope toward its climactic peak, while others are seemingly pointless or just plain silly, tossing a roadblock ahead of us and stunting that upward climb. In maintaining its good moments and excising the silly, The Town could have been a decent novella. There is a nice chapter involving a boy who takes a picture of the evil banya, quickly developing the film to reveal the empty and run-down bathhouse filled with the wrinkled forms of some elderly ghosts. Another good moment has Tomasov's wife volunteering at the local library, happily chatting it up with the other volunteers until she learns that are each hopelessly paranoid, believing that the government is concealing the truth about a meteor that is hurtling toward the earth and a doom-filled collision. This tense and surprising moment is shortly followed by a scene depicting a Molokan priest being attacked by his bible. I could not help but laugh and think of Bruce Campbell and the fluttering book in Army of Darkness; though silly, Campbell's escapades are at the least entertaining. Unfortunately the strange photographs of the banya and the conspiracy theorists at the library never reappear, so that these moments have little to do with anything, making me wonder why I was led to read them.

Bentley Little seems to have had a fairly general and abstract idea, and rather than unite the small parts into a solid an cohesive whole, he simply fills 276 pages with as many creepy (or silly) scenes that fail to help ground the work. Just because something is supernatural does not mean it should not be governed by some form of logic.

[This paragraph contains some minor spoilers.] The strange events are never clearly explained and ideas are tossed about randomly, most often never followed up, characters disappear (such as the handyman Odd), so that it all becomes meaningless. Characters receive revelations "suddenly" rather than through any form of deductive process. This haphazard conceptualizing makes for a poor mystery and is not terribly fair to the reader; mysteries should be a collaboration between author and reader, with the reader being involved and taking part in the investigation. Town characters themselves do little active investigating despite the odd occurrences which I suppose makes sense since by the final page we realize there really isn't anything within these pages to investigate.

Despite these Major flaws the novel is strangely not terrible, and this is a mystery I have spent some minutes investigating. The characterization, including relationships, general interaction and internal thought processes, is quite good. There is here an unevenness as well, as some characters are inexplicably shoved to the background (not just in Odd disappearing but Tomasov's daughter Sasha is forgotten over much of the novel's middle while her two siblings are given a large amount of attention). There are some nice surprises near the end and the writing itself is not terrible: it is straightforward, lacking in a distinct style but making for a speedy read. There is some clunkiness but that is provided by the publisher and their unusual number of typos (unusually high for a Signet paperback). The Town is the second novel by Little that I have read, and clearly The Store is a far superior work. Frankly, The Town is a novel I would not recommend.

[Lindsey Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't mean to finish this book tonight, but I'm glad I did. It puts me one over my revised goal of 24 books this year. I'm at the grand total of 25 now and it's 4am on the 29th. I had 63 pages left when I picked this up with the intent of "just a chapter"... Silly me.
I think that says a lot about the quality of the book though. I worked all day. I planned to go relax in the bath. Heck, I could have just taken the book with me, but I couldn't put it down. It didn't occur to me in those 63 pages to put it down. I just wanted to get "one more page" in. Let me tell you, the last 100 pages of this story are really intense.

I loved the ending. I really, really loved the ending. I would say that this book deserves a five star rating for quite a few reasons. It exposed me to a culture that I wasn't aware of and it inspired me to learn more about them. I didn't find many stereotypical cliches that one would expect in a supernatural horror story. The characters were interesting and very raw in how they developed. The Epilogue almost made me cry (because of how beautiful it was... if you've read it, you'll know why I had to specify). It was a really interesting book. It had a great premise. Everything tied together nicely, which hasn't always been my experience with Bentley Little books. Over all, it was pretty fantastic.

I was tempted to give it a four star rating though. While I applaud the use of multiple cultures in the story, I feel like I didn't get enough from the Native American aspect. I think this could have been remedied if Julia had at least learned Dan's father's name. I know they weren't a big focal point, but if you're going to draw them in and make them so interesting, I feel like there should have been that little moment for that character at least.
It also took me a while to get into the utter randomness of some of the imagery presented. I finally had to boil it down to some of the more extreme bits of mythology that I'm aware of, where things just don't logically make sense. After I came to that understanding, I liked it more, but I still wasn't in love with it.

My rating boiled down to this: Did I find the book worthwhile? Will I remember it in a week? A month? A Year? A Decade? Did I want to recommend it to people? Did I enjoy it? Would I read it again?
I would have to say to all of those. It was a lot of fun to read. It was memorable. I tried to get other people to read it... and I would read it again under the right circumstances. It deserves five stars in my mind.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Evil, cackling dwarves and cactus babies sure are frightening and entertaining, but this book gets more scary points for the real-life "grown folks" situations that we encounter with the Tomasav family, who are Molokan people eager to shake their traditional roots (except for Grandma).

Again, there are numerous crazy, terrifying incidents that made me laugh out loud more than a couple of times. That stuff is like candy to me. But some of the situations in this book are genuinely terrifying because I can directly relate to them. For instance, feeling that you have made a terrible decision that will affect your entire family negatively. Or trying to be constructive and proactive only to have the whole thing go terribly wrong, which makes you wonder why you should give a shit at all.

Yeah, it's not just boogies and stabbies here, although you will get plenty of that. I liked this book because it unnerved me with the "real life" situations while making me laugh at the "scary shit." It's a one-two punch that I didn't see coming.

[DAISY READS HORROR · Rating 4 out of 5]

**Slight Spoiler ALERT**

I LOVE LOVE LOVE scary books like this!! & its more of a plus when I find these goodies for $1 @ the bookstore! Best feeling ever!!! The Town will pull you in to it's horror from the very beginning. McGuane was a very creepy place to live with a very horrific past. Small towns always make for good scary books & movies. I think it's the mystery behind them. Especially desert towns. Being that a lot of them are almost ghost-towns they are the perfect setting to start a horror book at. I really enjoyed the twists and turns this book had. Although the whole perverted brother & sister thing was gross and the father & daughter thing too.

This was the first book I have read from Mr. Little and I will most definately be reading more of his books. He is at the same level as Stephen King! & by the way, this book won the "Bran Stoker Award" so that alone tells you its a scary book (if you follow Bram Stoker)!

[Tara · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 stars. Had some really stupid elements that basically ruined this for me, shit that almost would’ve worked if this had been a horror comedy. It was not that. And by stupid, I mean an evil freakin belly button and a building that sprouted hair. Yeah. Make of that what you will.

[John Lynch · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was ok. As far as Bentley Little goes, this is one of his works that while not difficult to find, it can be difficult to find in good condition. Unless I'm mistaken this is one of the few books of his that isn't currently in print. I can kind of understand why. I liked the story, and this reminded me of The Summoning, and a bit like Dominion where Little is using some historical cultures outside of a normal "Arizona cowboy, or business type". I did find the Russian facets of this book interesting, and it lent some extra back story that made the book a little bit better than it probably actually is. Overall, I'd say it is very Bentley Little, but it feels more phoned in than some of his other earlier works.

[Ga.selle (Semi-hiatus) Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It is your fault. You have invited them."

(Na-ta-whay or the uninvited )

“Sometimes evil wants to come back but cannot because everything is protected. But sometimes it finds a way. A crack to sneak through.”

3.5 💀💀💀
A 370-page descent into chaos. Has a wickedly eclectic mix of genre fixtures. There's paranormal activities, body-horror, a Banya possessed by demons, Russian/Indian myths and folklore just to name a few. It was a bit all over the place.
Surreal, over the top, whacked out gonzo horror. Some scenes were obscene, ludicrous, jarring and flat out gross 🤮🤣 they say expect the unexpected from Little, and I sure did not expect some of the ridiculously bizarre shits I've read.


trigger ⚠️
Mention of Rape/gang rape, animal death/cruelty, incest, domestic abuse to name a few

⚠️ Possible spoilers ahead

1. Woman giving birth to a cactus baby 🤣🌵
2. Murderous bible..slasher pages (paper cuts but way more deadly)
3. A guy named Odd who is married to a 🐮🐄
4. Church growing hairs
5. A regrowing umbilical cord that wants to strangle you
6. Evil dwarves /gnomes/ leprechauns..I personally HATE leprechauns -(insert the one from Rumpelstiltskin movies🤣)


E-📖

[Kate Victoria RescueandReading · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well that cactus baby scene psychologically scarred me for life…

All jokes aside this was a creepy read about folklore and Uninvited Guests that cause mayhem and murder. I had never heard of the Molokan people before, so it was interesting to learn (outside of the book via Wikipedia) about them as well.

It was a great combination of the old ways meeting the new age and I definitely recommend any horror aficionado give this one a read!

[Paul Preston · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up. Good spooky story but I had a hard time connecting with the characters

[hotsake (André Troesch) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Highly readable but the story lacked focus and a forward drive.

[Holly Dimitrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

reading as part of my 2022 50 state 50 scares challenge for the state of Arizona

[Kev Ruiz · Rating 3 out of 5]

★★★
This was my first Bentley Little book and, while I didn’t hate it, I didn’t love it either. The concept had potential, but the way the story unfolded made it hard to stay engaged.

The book is made up of a lot of separate horror moments – some more effective than others – but most didn’t help to move the plot or action forward. It often felt like things were just happening without much connection to the bigger picture. Because of that, the story felt a bit all over the place.

The characters didn’t really help either. Apart from Babunya, most of them were quite passive and didn’t seem to question much of what was going on. With no real drive from them, it was difficult to feel much momentum. I thought the ending worked – it wasn’t a huge surprise, but it did what it needed to.

It also took me far longer to read than I expected. Normally I’d finish something this length in a couple of days, but this dragged out over nearly 2 weeks! I just wasn’t in a hurry to pick it back up between sittings.

There were parts I enjoyed, and a few interesting ideas here and there, but overall it didn’t quite do it for me. I’ll still give another of his books a go – hopefully the next one will feel more connected.

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've said before that I feel like I've outgrown horror. I still like a good scary story, but the genre overall can be insipid and ridiculous. The stories can depend too much on gratuitous scenes of sex and/or violence, and some of the scenes that are supposed to be scary are just laughable. For a long time, my go-to example for that sort of scene was one from Joe Schreiber's Chasing the Dead, where the protagonist is attacked by overgrown lobsters from the back seat of her car. Now, though, I'm going to have to use one from The Town where one of the characters gives birth to a Saguaro cactus. That was the first point in the novel where I just about gave it up.

Later, one of the secondary characters is attacked by a book, the Bible, specifically. It gains life and starts flying around the room and attacking him. He throws the book off, but it flies back at him, undeterred. Does this sound like Army of Darkness to anyone else? In Army of Darkness, the story at least had that undertone of campiness to make us recognize the scene has humorous, but Little is attempting to go full horror with his version of the same scene. I'll laugh at both scenes, but only one of those was intended to be humorous.

The story is about a small, off-the-beaten-path town that has a high percentage of Molokan Russian residents. The town has a history of hauntings, which have been idle for many years. One of the people who moved away years ago returns with his family, and with his return comes a new wave of murders and inexplicable events.

I realized with this book that Little does a lot of telling instead of showing. His narrative moves quickly, and it's easy to get caught up in his stories, but it doesn't have a lot of subtlety, either. It's also disjointed, without much focus. It's like he had a grand idea to make the story about the terror of a haunted town, but then he got too bogged down with trying to make the next killing more creative than the last. It reminds me of the Final Destination and Nightmare on Elm Street movies, where they just devolve into different ways for people to die. There were a couple of unsettling, creepy moments in the story, but you have to wade through all of the tertiary characters getting killed off to find them.

As I was reading The Town, I was continually reminded of Stephen King's Desperation; both books are set in Arizona, in a small town that exists off the grid, feature an abandoned copper mine, and are about evil spirits that exist in said town. To Little's credit, the story is different enough that no one would ever confuse the two books, but every time I was reminded of the setting, I thought of Desperation. I think Little has more of a claim to the setting than King, but it was still distracting.

Oh, and Little also has one of his characters buy a book by Phillip Emmons, which is Little's own pseudonym. *eye roll*

Speaking of King, the story feels like it owes a great deal to The Shining. Little takes the concept of the hotel slowly driving its caretaker mad and applies it to an entire town. The man who has returned to the town is the one being driven mad, so the territory is somewhat familiar. In fact, there's an odd moment near the end of the book where he's apparently trapped, but is later freed without much mention on how he was un-trapped. I think Little was attempting to throw in an homage to the ghosts freeing Jack from the freezer, but it also felt like there was a large section of the story missing that would explain that. But then I realized that the rest of the novel is enough of a mess to conclude it was just poor writing.

Little is a decent enough writer, but this book is terrible. I've not reached the point where I've given up on him, but I wouldn't recommend anyone start with this book. Or even read it after reading his better books. It's just not worth it.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

In theory The Town sounded perfect for me. One of my favorite horror story tropes is a small, decaying town with plenty of secrets to hide. Not to mention, Stephen King called Bentley Little 'master of the macabre'. What could go wrong?! Plenty. The Town was not macabre, The Town was bizarre, and not good, creepy bizarre. Bizarre like a woman giving birth to a cactus. Yes. A cactus. I could have actually dealt with the cactus baby if it had a legitimate place in the storyline but it really didn't. This occurrence and a few others just seemed completely disconnected to the story. Other aspects of the story weren't fleshed out as much as I had hoped, leaving me wanting more of something I thought would have been interesting to the story.

I really enjoyed the Molokan religion woven into the story. I was unfamiliar with the religion and I always enjoy learning something new.

I'm not writing Bentley Little off completely. I know a lot of people are fans so I will definitely give him one more chance. Fingers crossed there aren't anymore cactus babies.

[Kim Smiley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a little slow to start, and had A LOT of religious background information to absorb relating to the Molokan's religion and customs. Once you get past that, the plot of the book is pretty good.

Gregory and his wife, along with their 3 children had hit the California lottery. Trying to get away from it all, they decide to move back to McGuane Arizona, where Gregory had grown up. They're taking Gregory's mother along as well.

McGuane is a haunted city. Strange things always go on there, but seem to escalate as soon as Gregory and his family move in. To make things worse, they're unknowingly moving in to a house that the previous owner killed his wife and family while they slept.

This is a pretty good read, like I said, little slow to start, but if you can get past all of the religious information it's a book that you should get through pretty quickly. Bentley Little has written better, but this one is definitely not his worst. I'd give it a C+!

[Ronnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This seemed promising early on. The scene between best friends Adam and Roberto when faced with the imminent move Adam's folks are about to make, uprooting their family from all they've known, perfectly captures a 12-year-old's thoughts and emotions. Things pretty quickly went downhill from there. I was hoping for eeriness, I think, and was even open to some oddness, but there are about 10 true WTF moments that are so bizarre they border on ridiculous. As opposed to scary. Suspension of disbelief isn't usually a problem for me, but cactus baby, heifer wife, evil umbilical cord, hairy church, etc. served to distract and detract for me. Side characters are routinely introduced and then barely mentioned again. By the time of the Rumpelstiltskin-like resolution, I was mainly just glad it was done.

First line (Prologue):
"Loretta Nelson hated working at night."