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Cornbones
If you take from it, it will take from you...
Henry Rustin’s luck has run out, perhaps for the last time. Little does he know his troubles have only begun. When a last-chance horse bet goes awry, he skips town to outpace the mob, heading to yet another easy-money opportunity. It’s in a place where they’ll never find him—a tiny Pennsylvania farming town named Harveston. But the longer he stays, the more he realizes the townsfolk, with their strange customs and superstitions, live in fear of something hidden and deadly—a vengeful presence that hunts for blood amid the lonely, dried-up cornfields. “If you take from it, it will take from you,” the townsfolk warn. When Henry tries to sell an inherited farmhouse to pay off the mob and start his life over, he learns that there’s no going back. No one has ever left the forgotten little town without paying the ultimate price.
Henry Rustin’s luck has run out, perhaps for the last time. Little does he know his troubles have only begun. When a last-chance horse bet goes awry, he skips town to outpace the mob, heading to yet another easy-money opportunity. It’s in a place where they’ll never find him—a tiny Pennsylvania farming town named Harveston. But the longer he stays, the more he realizes the townsfolk, with their strange customs and superstitions, live in fear of something hidden and deadly—a vengeful presence that hunts for blood amid the lonely, dried-up cornfields. “If you take from it, it will take from you,” the townsfolk warn. When Henry tries to sell an inherited farmhouse to pay off the mob and start his life over, he learns that there’s no going back. No one has ever left the forgotten little town without paying the ultimate price.
276 pages, Paperback
Published November 19, 2024
3 people are currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
Timothy Roderick
11 books26 followersTimothy Roderick is a native southern Californian who lives in Los Angeles. Timothy has written five nonfiction titles including the COVR finalist Wicca: A Year and a Day (Llewellyn Publications, 2005), and Small Press Award Winner Dark Moon Mysteries (Llewellyn Publications, 1996), which was also a Time-Warner Book of the Month Club selection. He has also been featured in The Witches' Calendar, Llewellyn's Magical Almanac, The Encyclopedia of Wicca and Witchcraft (Llewellyn, 2000), and A Witch Like Me (New Page Books, 2001). Timothy's fictional works have received critical acclaim and a broad readership. His works include the folk horror novel Cornbones (2024), the paranormal/psychological thriller Nine Zero One Three (2023), the psychological thriller One Crooked Thing (2020), and the young adult fantasy, Briar Blackwood’s Grimmest of Fairytales (Lodestone, 2015).
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 8, 2024
I loved this book!
From the spectacular Don Noble cover, to the awe-inspiring ending, Timothy Roderick's "Cornbones" is a superb novel of folk horror, with a very strong cast, an absolutely creepy supernatural threat, almost all transpiring in a claustrophobic 1930s setting, from the LA underworld to a ghostly strange town from which noone can leave.
Superb in tone and atmosphere, the book pulls no punches, going for the jugular time and time again; for all its subtlety, this is a grim and dark tale of cult and folk horror, with bloody sacrifice, infant loss, mob mentality, carnage, non-consensual pregnacies and all kinds of triggers of female abuse (thankfully not shown). The monster itself, supernatural through and through, once unbound by its own rules, provokes such mayhem, it's a true pleasure that the writing is cinematic and everything can be visualized with ease and great satisfaction!
That said, the book’s pacing, particularly in the first third, worried me a bit: at parts it was confusing, as Roderick took some time setting the pieces in the right position. And in the last third, strong deus ex machina vibes can't be ignored; yet, even with these totally sudden and surprising turns, tension keeps increasing and the story never stops being utterly engrossing and captivating; how does that even happen? Great storytelling skills - that's how!
The ending was beyond sublime. Not only did it wrap up everything in a satisfactory way, not only was it brutal and horrible enough, it allowed me to make sense of all those small points in the plot I might have felt they were lacking coherence: it's the perfect closure to the main character's journey through his personal, literal and metaphorical, hell.
Many of the book's frightening and disturbing images will live in my mind for some time. Looking forward to reading more of the author's works. This is good horror, brilliantly done!
From the spectacular Don Noble cover, to the awe-inspiring ending, Timothy Roderick's "Cornbones" is a superb novel of folk horror, with a very strong cast, an absolutely creepy supernatural threat, almost all transpiring in a claustrophobic 1930s setting, from the LA underworld to a ghostly strange town from which noone can leave.
Superb in tone and atmosphere, the book pulls no punches, going for the jugular time and time again; for all its subtlety, this is a grim and dark tale of cult and folk horror, with bloody sacrifice, infant loss, mob mentality, carnage, non-consensual pregnacies and all kinds of triggers of female abuse (thankfully not shown). The monster itself, supernatural through and through, once unbound by its own rules, provokes such mayhem, it's a true pleasure that the writing is cinematic and everything can be visualized with ease and great satisfaction!
That said, the book’s pacing, particularly in the first third, worried me a bit: at parts it was confusing, as Roderick took some time setting the pieces in the right position. And in the last third, strong deus ex machina vibes can't be ignored; yet, even with these totally sudden and surprising turns, tension keeps increasing and the story never stops being utterly engrossing and captivating; how does that even happen? Great storytelling skills - that's how!
The ending was beyond sublime. Not only did it wrap up everything in a satisfactory way, not only was it brutal and horrible enough, it allowed me to make sense of all those small points in the plot I might have felt they were lacking coherence: it's the perfect closure to the main character's journey through his personal, literal and metaphorical, hell.
Many of the book's frightening and disturbing images will live in my mind for some time. Looking forward to reading more of the author's works. This is good horror, brilliantly done!
December 7, 2024
I love folk horror, so I like the idea behind the plot. It was just hard to follow at times.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews