The Night Is Alive

MIDNIGHT IN SAVANNAH… It's a city of beauty, history…hauntings. And one of the most haunted places in Savannah is a tavern called The Dragonslayer, built in the 1750s. The current owner, Gus Anderson, is a descendant of the original innkeeper and his pirate brother, Blue. Gus summons his granddaughter, Abigail, home from Virginia, where she's studying at the FBI Academy. When she arrives, she's devastated to find him dead. Murdered. But Abby soon learns that Gus isn't the only one to meet a brutal and untimely end; there've been at least two other victims. Then Captain Blue Anderson starts making ghostly appearances, and the FBI's paranormal investigation unit, the Krewe of Hunters, sends in Agent Malachi Gordon. Abby and Malachi have a similar ability to connect with the dead…and a similar stubbornness. Sparks immediately begin to fly—sparks of attraction and discord. But as the death toll rises, they have to trust each other or they, too, might find themselves among the dead haunting old Savannah!

Tommy's not a bad man; he's getting by. Renting a run-down room in his Uncle Maurice's house, just about keeping his ex-wife and kids at arm's length, and rolling from one get-rich-quick scheme to the other with his pal Doc. Then one day he comes to the aid of Aimee, who's not had it easy herself, struggling through life the only way she knows how. Their past won't let go easily, but together there's a glimmer of hope that they could make something more of their lives. Something extraordinary. Perhaps. With inimitable warmth, style and craft, Conor McPherson's THE NIGHT ALIVE deftly mines the humanity to be found in the most unlikely of situations.

When her grandfather, the owner of a haunted Savannah tavern built in the 1750s, is murdered, Abigail works with Agent Malachi Gordon, a member of the FBI's paranormal investigation unit, to solve the murder.

In his latest soul-chilling novel, bestselling author Peter Straub tells of a famous children’s book author who, in the wake of a grotesque accident, realizes that the most basic facts of her existence, including her existence itself, have come into question. Willy Patrick, the respected author of the award-winning young-adult novel In the Night Room, thinks she is losing her mind–again. One day, she is drawn helplessly into the parking lot of a warehouse. She knows somehow that her daughter, Holly, is being held in the building, and she has an overwhelming need to rescue her. But what Willy knows is impossible, for her daughter is dead. On the same day, author Timothy Underhill, who has been struggling with a new book about a troubled young woman, is confronted with the ghost of his nine-year-old sister, April. Soon after, he begins to receive eerie, fragmented e-mails that he finally realizes are from people he knew in his youth–people now dead. Like his sister, they want urgently to tell him something. When Willy and Timothy meet, the frightening parallels between Willy’s tragic loss and the story in Tim’s manuscript suggest that they must join forces to confront the evils surrounding them.

The toys of Pleasantville, where parents don't talk with other parents and children don't play together, come alive one night and have a party. When it becomes time to go home they return to the wrong houses. In trying to get the right toys back to the right children the parents find they have to talk to each other and discover that they are all very nice people indeed!

Tommy, a middle-aged loner separated from his wife and children, is renting a run-down room in his uncle Maurice's house in Dublin. He scrapes a living doing odd jobs with his pal Doc. But Tommy's life is overturned when he takes in Aimee, a bloodied, beaten-up young woman he found being battered by Kenneth, her apparent boyfriend. Together there's a glimmer of hope they could make something more of their lives.

Revenge is an obsession of its own. Three years after her senior year horrors, Luna Ketz struggles to move on. Starting over in an apartment in Bowling Green with her new roommate hasn't made things easier. Nothing helps, including weekly check-ins to ensure her assailant, Chance Welfrey, is still in a coma. When he disappears from the hospital, Luna's worst fears are realized. Chance remembers everything. The next time she sees him is on her doorstep. He's found a new way into her life, and this game of cat and mouse will take all of her wits to survive.

Fiction. Part futuristic fiction and part meditative memoir, THAT NIGHT ALIVE begins on the narrator's death date and moves backward in time to tell her story. She traces her path as a successful crypto-reporter, navigating a life of secrecy and solitude and world travel. A counter-narrative intersects, told by the same woman as a young artist struggling to create a work of beauty. THAT NIGHT ALIVE investigates art and failure, persistence and success. "Beautifully paced, THAT NIGHT ALIVE records a woman's yearning to make something lasting in a post-apocalyptic world of surveillance and subterfuge where genuine art is forbidden. Tara Deal's ambitious, inventive, continually surprising, and finely etched novella immerses us in a woman's struggles and rewards the most close and attentive reading." Lee Upton "In Tara Deal's THAT NIGHT ALIVE moments as vivid and complex as any actually lived weave a narrative of compelling intimacy. Unexpected images ask to be unpacked, considered, and remembered. The narrative plays with time in a language that provokes curiosity as we progress into the text and its world." Andrew Davison, Managing Editor, Glassworks Magazine"