The Cellar Book

"Lily?" My stomach dropped as a tall, dark-haired man stepped into view. Had he been hiding between the trees? "No. Sorry." Gulping, I took a step back. "I'm not Lily." He shook his head, a satisfied grin on his face. "No. You are Lily." "I'm Summer. You have the wrong person." You utter freak! I could hear my pulse crashing in my ears. How stupid to give him my real name. He continued to stare at me, smiling. It made me feel sick. "You are Lily," he repeated. Before I could blink, he threw his arms forward and grabbed me. I tried to shout, but he clasped his hand over my mouth, muffling my screams. My heart raced. I'm going to die. For months Summer is trapped in a cellar with the man who took her—and three other girls: Rose, Poppy, and Violet. His perfect, pure flowers. His family. But flowers can't survive long cut off from the sun, and time is running out...

Chilling psychological suspense with “exceptional punch” from the Edgar Award–winning author of The Dark Room (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). It seems like a respectable British home, occupied by the Songolis, an upstanding family of African immigrants. But hidden within the cellar is Muna—a teenage girl who cooks for them, cleans for them, endures brutal abuse from them . . . and is powerless to escape. Then one day, the Songolis’ ten-year-old son fails to come home from school, and Scotland Yard arrives at the house to investigate. While they look into the boy’s disappearance, Muna must play the role of beloved daughter. She suddenly has a real bedroom, with sunlight, and real clothing to wear. But she must continue to keep quiet—and hide the fact that she has learned how to speak English. Even as the police are watching, her secret life of enslavement goes on. But Muna is hatching a plan—and her acts of rebellion and revenge will be more terrifying than this family could have imagined—in this dark, twisting tale that represents “contemporary crime writing at its absolute peak” (Val McDermid).

Stephen Smith is the boy who did not exist. Born out of wedlock in the early 1960s, Steve's parents hid him away from the world by locking him in the cellar...for thirteen years. Starved and beaten, the little boy's world was a darkened room that measured just eight feet by ten with a single makeshift bed, bare light bulb, and a solitary table. Steve would spend his days conjuring up an imaginary world full of monsters he would draw to try and block out the physical and mental torture inflicted on him by his brutal father. Apart from a few admissions to hospital as a result of his 'imprisonment', Steve remained in the coal cellar of the family home where he was deprived of daylight, his childhood, school, and human contact until he'd reached his teenage years. Eventually, he escaped only to fall prey to the instigators of two of the worst cases of institutional abuse in the UK at Aston Hall hospital and St. William's Catholic School. The Boy in the Cellar is a horrifying true story of torture and cruelty, that reveals a human's full capacity to fight for survival and search out happiness and hope.

Arguably Laymon's most celebrated--and most infamous--novel, The Cellar is the first book in his Beast House Chronicles. Only the bravest tourists dare to venture inside the sealed-up Beast House, long rumored to be haunted. But the creature that lives in the cellar is no ghost, and it's hungry

While volunteering as a magazine delivery girl in a convalescent hospital during the Second World War, Molly uncovers a mystery involving the theft of rationed food supplies for sale on the black market.

Meredith Willis is suspicious of Adrien, the new guy next door. When she dares to sneak a look into the windows of his house, she sees something in the cellar that makes her believe that Adrien might be more than just a creep—he may be an actual monster. But her sister, Heather, doesn’t share Meredith’s repulsion. Heather believes Adrien is the only guy who really understands her. In fact, she may be falling in love with him. When Adrien and Heather are cast as the leads in the school production of Romeo and Juliet, to Heather, it feels like fate. To Meredith, it feels like a bad omen. But if she tries to tear the couple apart, she could end up in the last place she’d ever want to be: the cellar. Can Meredith convince her sister that she’s dating the living dead before it’s too late for both of them?

Following a foreboding clue, Zack and Laura search for a cellar in Zack's new house and discover a machine that causes a lot of trouble.

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