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ASYLUM III - Crowtree Manor
"Matt Drabble is a name that will one day be as widely recognized as Stephen King & Dean Koontz" - READERS FAVORITE
The third installment of the best selling and multi award winning Asylum series, a unique horror anthology with a linking story line between the tales.
It begins with an enticing invitation, a private preview for the first guaranteed haunted house tourist attraction.
Skeptical minds brought together in a building steeped in a bloody history, all with their own dark secrets to protect.
It had been a long time since this building was a private hospital and housed the most dangerous and deranged minds. Now it has a new owner and a new purpose
It is a house that feeds on darkness and only attracts the very worst in humanity. Stone floors and walls that have witnessed the brutality of man and has blood seeped into its very foundations.
The doors are open and the rooms are ready to receive its first guests and their darkest secrets, welcome to Crowtree Manor.
The third installment of the best selling and multi award winning Asylum series, a unique horror anthology with a linking story line between the tales.
It begins with an enticing invitation, a private preview for the first guaranteed haunted house tourist attraction.
Skeptical minds brought together in a building steeped in a bloody history, all with their own dark secrets to protect.
It had been a long time since this building was a private hospital and housed the most dangerous and deranged minds. Now it has a new owner and a new purpose
It is a house that feeds on darkness and only attracts the very worst in humanity. Stone floors and walls that have witnessed the brutality of man and has blood seeped into its very foundations.
The doors are open and the rooms are ready to receive its first guests and their darkest secrets, welcome to Crowtree Manor.
589 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 3, 2018
19 people are currently reading
9 people want to read
About the author
Matt Drabble
63 books244 followersBorn in Bath, England in 1974, a self-professed "funny onion", equal parts sport loving jock and comic book geek.
Awards & Achievements:
"ABRA-CADAVER" is the 2017 Readers Favorite Silver Medal Winner for Horror Fiction. It is also a 2015 Kindle Book Review Finalist, an Indie Book of the Day winner and the 2016 Book Excellence Award Winner for Horror Fiction.
"GATED" is the 2015 Readers Favorite Gold Medal Winner. It is also a UK & US Horror Chart Top Ten Best Seller & winner of the Full Moon Awards 2014 Horror Book of the Year.
"ASYLUM - 13 TALES OF TERROR" was a US Horror Chart #5. It was also voted #5 on The Horror Novel Review's Top 10 Books of 2013 & was the Readers Favorite 2014 Gold Medal Winner for Anthology Fiction.
"THE LAST RESORT" is the 2019 Readers Favorite Silver Medal Winner for Horror Fiction & The 2019 Kindle Book Review's Winner for Horror/Suspense
Visit me at www.mattdrabble.co.uk to download free short stories.
Twitter: MattDrabble01
Facebook: matt.drabble.3
Instagram: mattdrabble01
or to sign up for a newsletter: http://mad.ly/signups/95503/join
Awards & Achievements:
"ABRA-CADAVER" is the 2017 Readers Favorite Silver Medal Winner for Horror Fiction. It is also a 2015 Kindle Book Review Finalist, an Indie Book of the Day winner and the 2016 Book Excellence Award Winner for Horror Fiction.
"GATED" is the 2015 Readers Favorite Gold Medal Winner. It is also a UK & US Horror Chart Top Ten Best Seller & winner of the Full Moon Awards 2014 Horror Book of the Year.
"ASYLUM - 13 TALES OF TERROR" was a US Horror Chart #5. It was also voted #5 on The Horror Novel Review's Top 10 Books of 2013 & was the Readers Favorite 2014 Gold Medal Winner for Anthology Fiction.
"THE LAST RESORT" is the 2019 Readers Favorite Silver Medal Winner for Horror Fiction & The 2019 Kindle Book Review's Winner for Horror/Suspense
Visit me at www.mattdrabble.co.uk to download free short stories.
Twitter: MattDrabble01
Facebook: matt.drabble.3
Instagram: mattdrabble01
or to sign up for a newsletter: http://mad.ly/signups/95503/join
Ratings & Reviews
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 19, 2020
Some great stories here—Drabble is a really enjoyable writer—but Asylum III is an Asylum book like Halloween III is part of the Halloween franchise.
March 31, 2018
Review: ASYLUM III by Matt Drabble
I'm quite a fan of Matt Drabble, a horror author who knows how to ensure the chills, and to make those chills creative, imaginative, and terrifying. So don't miss his oeuvre.
Asylum III begins explosively, and it never stops surprising. The author juggles a large cast of characters and multiple backstories, with excellent results. There's a lot of long-delayed justice, a lot of hungry vengeance, and tons of implacability. I like to play on the roller-coaster racketing trope, but here, it's true, in multiple senses. Start Asylum III: you shall not sleep.
I'm quite a fan of Matt Drabble, a horror author who knows how to ensure the chills, and to make those chills creative, imaginative, and terrifying. So don't miss his oeuvre.
Asylum III begins explosively, and it never stops surprising. The author juggles a large cast of characters and multiple backstories, with excellent results. There's a lot of long-delayed justice, a lot of hungry vengeance, and tons of implacability. I like to play on the roller-coaster racketing trope, but here, it's true, in multiple senses. Start Asylum III: you shall not sleep.
May 20, 2018
NOTE: The author graciously gave me a copy of this book and asked me to write a review.
Thomas Wolfe said “you can’t go home again,” but in Asylum III, horror writer Matt Drabble has returned home to a creepy secluded mansion where a group of 13 strangers with very bizarre incidents in their individual pasts find themselves in the exact same location where another group of 13 strangers gathered previously and another group of 13 strangers gathered previously to that. And, as long as Drabble sticks to telling readers what happened to this current group of 13 strangers in years past, Asylum III is one creepy horror story collection.
Asylum III adopts essentially the same framing device as Drabble used in his two previous Asylum books. A former mental institution where bad things happened to patients and staff earlier (as recounted in those first two books) has been deserted for years and is now being refurbished as a modern day haunted house attraction. The mysterious owner has invited some special guests for the occasion, along with various staff members and workers, and, during the course of the book, the author tells a story about each one of them. As Asylum III progresses, it becomes clear to the readers and the surviving guests that the owner has much more in mind than merely staging a dry run for his fun house.
The stories in Asylum III, as with most anthologies, vary somewhat in quality as well as theme, although all fall under the general category of horror. Many of them are variations on quite familiar horror memes, but Drabble usually puts a bit of a twist on them to make them stand out. My favorite story was “Double Act,” a variation on the tale of the ventriloquist who might be falling under the spell of his dummy. A talent scout for a reality TV show at first wants to sign the act up but soon realizes that British network television isn’t ready for this type of entertainment. Readers may think they know the direction in which this story is headed, but Drabble throws in some twists, en route to a bizarre finish that keeps getting wilder and creepier as it goes on.
Another very good story is “Look Who’s Stalking,” somewhat of a cross between “Children of the Corn” and “The Wicker Man,” in which a family on vacation takes a proverbial wrong term and arrives in a small town just in time for the Harvest Festival, a celebration that isn’t very fruitful for the family. The ending of that one is the best in “Asylum III.” And there is also “Detention,” a variation on the “Hansel and Gretel” story, but in this case, it’s more like “Three Gretels,” when three 12-year-olds act up in class and are stuck in detention with the school librarian, who is not what she first seems. As in “Double Act,” most readers will probably think they know the direction in which the story is going, but there’s a big twist before the action really gets started. I also liked “Vlog of the Dead,” a clever 21st century take on the theme of possession of a living person by a spirit. In this case, a woman receives a haunted computer and finds that its previous owner wants to take over the living woman’s entire life, including her online vlog, which explodes in popularity.
As in Drabble’s earlier books, the weakest part of Asylum III is its framing device. Telling a single story over some 400 pages with 13 different interruptions is difficult, and the overall story, although effective in spots, doesn’t work as a whole as well as do the individual stories. Also, Drabble’s desire to sprinkle his book with pop culture references (a couple of characters in one story are named “Shaun Frost” and “Mr. Pegg” and a character in another story is called “Virgil Tibbs”) comes back to haunt him in “Finders Not Keepers,” which is essentially a very predictable rehash of every “Mummy” movie ever made.
Overall, readers will remember Asylum III more for the individual stories than the framing device, and they display just the right mix of self-aware humor and ghoulish moments to delight horror fans. While in most horror stories, readers wonder what deadly peril awaits around the next corner, I found myself anticipating what clever plot twist or take on a familiar theme Drabble had in store for me, and I was occasionally surprised but rarely disappointed. Like Drabble’s earlier, similar anthologies, readers will want to check into Asylum III but they won’t want to leave.
Thomas Wolfe said “you can’t go home again,” but in Asylum III, horror writer Matt Drabble has returned home to a creepy secluded mansion where a group of 13 strangers with very bizarre incidents in their individual pasts find themselves in the exact same location where another group of 13 strangers gathered previously and another group of 13 strangers gathered previously to that. And, as long as Drabble sticks to telling readers what happened to this current group of 13 strangers in years past, Asylum III is one creepy horror story collection.
Asylum III adopts essentially the same framing device as Drabble used in his two previous Asylum books. A former mental institution where bad things happened to patients and staff earlier (as recounted in those first two books) has been deserted for years and is now being refurbished as a modern day haunted house attraction. The mysterious owner has invited some special guests for the occasion, along with various staff members and workers, and, during the course of the book, the author tells a story about each one of them. As Asylum III progresses, it becomes clear to the readers and the surviving guests that the owner has much more in mind than merely staging a dry run for his fun house.
The stories in Asylum III, as with most anthologies, vary somewhat in quality as well as theme, although all fall under the general category of horror. Many of them are variations on quite familiar horror memes, but Drabble usually puts a bit of a twist on them to make them stand out. My favorite story was “Double Act,” a variation on the tale of the ventriloquist who might be falling under the spell of his dummy. A talent scout for a reality TV show at first wants to sign the act up but soon realizes that British network television isn’t ready for this type of entertainment. Readers may think they know the direction in which this story is headed, but Drabble throws in some twists, en route to a bizarre finish that keeps getting wilder and creepier as it goes on.
Another very good story is “Look Who’s Stalking,” somewhat of a cross between “Children of the Corn” and “The Wicker Man,” in which a family on vacation takes a proverbial wrong term and arrives in a small town just in time for the Harvest Festival, a celebration that isn’t very fruitful for the family. The ending of that one is the best in “Asylum III.” And there is also “Detention,” a variation on the “Hansel and Gretel” story, but in this case, it’s more like “Three Gretels,” when three 12-year-olds act up in class and are stuck in detention with the school librarian, who is not what she first seems. As in “Double Act,” most readers will probably think they know the direction in which the story is going, but there’s a big twist before the action really gets started. I also liked “Vlog of the Dead,” a clever 21st century take on the theme of possession of a living person by a spirit. In this case, a woman receives a haunted computer and finds that its previous owner wants to take over the living woman’s entire life, including her online vlog, which explodes in popularity.
As in Drabble’s earlier books, the weakest part of Asylum III is its framing device. Telling a single story over some 400 pages with 13 different interruptions is difficult, and the overall story, although effective in spots, doesn’t work as a whole as well as do the individual stories. Also, Drabble’s desire to sprinkle his book with pop culture references (a couple of characters in one story are named “Shaun Frost” and “Mr. Pegg” and a character in another story is called “Virgil Tibbs”) comes back to haunt him in “Finders Not Keepers,” which is essentially a very predictable rehash of every “Mummy” movie ever made.
Overall, readers will remember Asylum III more for the individual stories than the framing device, and they display just the right mix of self-aware humor and ghoulish moments to delight horror fans. While in most horror stories, readers wonder what deadly peril awaits around the next corner, I found myself anticipating what clever plot twist or take on a familiar theme Drabble had in store for me, and I was occasionally surprised but rarely disappointed. Like Drabble’s earlier, similar anthologies, readers will want to check into Asylum III but they won’t want to leave.
March 24, 2018
Crowtree Manor has stood empty for many years. It was the place of a brutal murder that happened by the most unexpected person on Halloween night. Many years later a Halloween surprise goes horribly wrong. In the present, someone is renovating it but that person has so much more planned than just making a wonderful home to live in.
Those that cross paths with Crowtree Manor have secrets of their own. Stories of possessed computers, mummy princesses, stalkers and so much more intercept with the story of Crowtree Manor. Around and around we go from twisted story to another. Ramping up the tension until it all comes crashing down upon our heads.
I love a good horror story and this book touches upon several themes we see in those stories. I love how they all connect to the mansion and how the characters find their place in this house of horrors.
This is my first book in the Asylum series and my first from Matt Drabble. But this will NOT be my last. I loved how each story drew you in closer and closer to the heart of pure evil. If you love horror stories too you need to check this book out. Now I’m going to go catch up on the other books that I have missed.
I received a complimentary copy of this book. I voluntarily chose to read and post an honest review.
Those that cross paths with Crowtree Manor have secrets of their own. Stories of possessed computers, mummy princesses, stalkers and so much more intercept with the story of Crowtree Manor. Around and around we go from twisted story to another. Ramping up the tension until it all comes crashing down upon our heads.
I love a good horror story and this book touches upon several themes we see in those stories. I love how they all connect to the mansion and how the characters find their place in this house of horrors.
This is my first book in the Asylum series and my first from Matt Drabble. But this will NOT be my last. I loved how each story drew you in closer and closer to the heart of pure evil. If you love horror stories too you need to check this book out. Now I’m going to go catch up on the other books that I have missed.
I received a complimentary copy of this book. I voluntarily chose to read and post an honest review.
April 13, 2021
As in the prior two books in the series, there are individual short stories framed by an overall story. The main difference in this one, compared to the first two, is that the overall story near the end involves multiple people (the first book is focused on 2 people, the third is basically focused on 3 and this one has more than a half dozen). All the stories were interesting but with so many people at the end of the overall narrative, it was hard to root for any of them. Even though you had their stories, some came later in the book so there wasn't much connection to them. And the story does try to wrap up the legends around the place but I wish there had been more of a story about the origin of Crowtree Manor itself. But still a good collection of strange stories.
August 3, 2018
Quite A ride
I love Matt Drabble novels in general, but this version of Asylum really surprised me. It was an anthology... In novel form... If that makes sense. You definitely have to pay attention and be good at following storylines and characters with this one. He swims in and out between past and present whole mixing in the back story of all the characters to bring them together for the main tale. The ending sparked my curiosity and has mfr taking guesses about the future of two particular characters. If love to see "Asylum 4" ASAP!
I love Matt Drabble novels in general, but this version of Asylum really surprised me. It was an anthology... In novel form... If that makes sense. You definitely have to pay attention and be good at following storylines and characters with this one. He swims in and out between past and present whole mixing in the back story of all the characters to bring them together for the main tale. The ending sparked my curiosity and has mfr taking guesses about the future of two particular characters. If love to see "Asylum 4" ASAP!
August 18, 2021
My favorite of the three!
The story in this book was definitely the best. I enjoyed the premise of the people being invited to attend the pre-opening of a haunted house and reading about each of their haunted stories.
The only reason I'm giving it 4 stars is for the way the book was laid out. In a lot of the chapters, the story would switch between different characters without having a line or anything letting the reader know that it was a different point of view. It was irritating and confusing at times. Other than that, fantastic story!
The story in this book was definitely the best. I enjoyed the premise of the people being invited to attend the pre-opening of a haunted house and reading about each of their haunted stories.
The only reason I'm giving it 4 stars is for the way the book was laid out. In a lot of the chapters, the story would switch between different characters without having a line or anything letting the reader know that it was a different point of view. It was irritating and confusing at times. Other than that, fantastic story!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews