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Shop nowHold the Dark
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Learn moreA terrifying literary thriller set on the Alaskan tundra, about the mystery of evil and mankind's losing battle with nature
At the start of another pitiless winter, the wolves have come for the children of Keelut. Three children have been taken from this isolated Alaskan village, including the six-year-old son of Medora and Vernon Slone.
Shaken with grief and seeking consolation, Medora contacts nature writer and wolf expert Russell Core. Sixty years old, ailing in both body and spirit, and estranged from his daughter and wife, Core arrives in Keelut to investigate the killings. Immersing himself in this settlement at the end of the world, he discovers the horrifying darkness at the heart of Medora Slone and learns of an unholy truth harbored by this village.
When Vernon Slone returns from a desert war to discover his son dead and his wife missing, he begins a methodical pursuit across this frozen landscape. Aided by his boyhood companion, the taciturn and deadly Cheeon, and pursued by the stalwart detective Donald Marium, Slone is without mercy, cutting a bloody swath through the wilderness of his homeland. As Russell Core attempts to rescue Medora from her husband's vengeance, he comes face-to-face with an unspeakable secret at the furthermost reaches of American soilāa secret about the unkillable bonds of family and the untamed animal in the soul of every human being.
An Alaskan Oresteia, an epic woven of both blood and myth, Hold the Dark recalls the hyperborean climate and tribalism of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone and the primeval violence of James Dickey's Deliverance.
William Giraldi is the author of the critically acclaimed novelĀ Busy Monsters and is fiction editor for the journal AGNI at Boston University. He lives in Boston with his wife and sons.
Richard Ferrone has recorded over 150 audiobooks including thrillers, romances, science fiction, and inspirational novels. He has earned numerous Audie Awards for narration, as well as Audie nominations. He was also recognized as an AudioFile āVoice of the Last Centuryā and a āRising and Shining Star.ā A science fiction fan, he narrated Kim Stanley Robinsonās Mars trilogy. He has also narrated works by James Patterson, Dashiell Hammett, Walter Mosley, John Sandford, Eric Van Lustbader, and Stuart Woods.
Reviews
āA taut, muscular, and often unforgettable journey into the heart of darkness. Epic, relentless, and beautifully realized.ā
āHold the Dark is a chilling, mysterious, and completely engaging novel that will keep readers turning pages late into the night. The cold and unforgiving Alaskan wild becomes much more than a backdrop for this spellbinding story. It becomes a characterāa living creature with its own hungers, its own secrets, its own icy motives, its own implacable will. I was entranced.ā
āGiraldās unrelenting, perfectly paced prose whips the book along to an unnerving conclusion. By the end, we feel, as Core does āthat man belongs neither in civilization nor natureābecause we are aberrations between two states of being.āā
āFierce, extraordinaryā¦Hold the Dark is an unnerving and intimate portrayal of nature gone awry. Itās all but bereft of levity, spectacularly violent, and exquisitely written.ā
āMaybe it all began with Graham Greeneās Brighton Rock in 1938, but there is a variety of modern thriller, created these days by Robert Stone and Denis Johnson at their best, that delivers narrative thrust and beautifully composed sentences by the pageful even as it peels away the thin membrane that separates entertainment from art, and nature from civilization. Hereās Boston writer William Giraldi adding to the slender ranks of such masterly fictionā¦[Hold the Dark] certainly stands out as one of the decadeās best books of its kind, and one that deserves, because of its stylish flaunting of some of our darkest fears, a future readership.ā
āThereās an oddness and otherness to this place, and Giraldi speaks its taut, original language. To appreciate its power fully, Hold the Dark should be read closelyānot so much for clues to the mystery but rather for an appreciation of how language bridges worlds.ā
āHold the Dark is a mystery novel with all the right ingredients: tough characters, beautifully dangerous landscapes, revenge, a detective on the chase, a husband going after his wife, and enough bullet casings to rattle in the mind long after the story is finished.ā
āUtterly brilliantā¦Hold the Dark is that rarest of literary beasts: a novel whose sentences gleam like gemstones but whose pages carry you along like a bullet train.ā
āHold the Dark is a powerful meditation on nature, violence, and responsibility with the concentration of a fable or fever dreamāa book hard to get out of your mind long after youāve put it down.ā
āGiraldiās back-country Alaska is a savagely amoral place where the constant struggle for survival brings out the most elemental aspects of humanity. This work travels deep into the most ancient and primitive realms of being, offering an unflinchingāand more than a little frighteningāexploration of the domains of the unconscious that are more commonly the province of myth and fairy tale.ā
āSome novels seem ready-made for Hollywood to gobble up and spin into a film script. Giraldiās second novel comes close to fitting this easy mold. However, despite how well he can write an action scene, his carefully developed themes and characters transcend the Hollywood modelā¦Written in a galloping prose embedded with a hard poetry, Hold the Dark will not disappoint disciples of action fiction.ā
āSnow, ice, wolves, murder, and dark love are encountered in Hold the Dark, William Giraldiās hard, unflinching, and powerful novel. This story and the telling of it have the clout and rigor of a Norse Saga.ā
āRichard Ferroneās gravelly voice suits this story of human and animal violenceā¦Ferroneās narration is easy to follow and well paced. He does a good job with the dialogue among the tough guys who make up the bulk of the characters. This is not just a story about wolves or Alaska. Itās about the human condition.ā
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