The way Davidson deftly pirouettes his way between bated-breath anticipation and a denouement that owes as much to John Carpenter as H.P. This version of the hot, wet South isn’t a far stretch from Daniel Woodrell’s twig-snap rustic dread but is a closer cousin to the wetwork terror of John Hornor Jacobs or Joe Hill. Let’s face it, if you hang out in dusty old estates populated by long-kept secrets, guilt, remorse, and madness, something “squelching wetly,” as Stranger Things would put it, is bound to come slithering out of a hole. But while a reunion with a newly sober Hank leads to an uneasy détente between father and daughter, Nellie and Max are also menaced by unpredictable phantoms, including the specter of a young girl, a dead bear who won’t seem to stay put, and the resurrected Dr. Settling into her grandfather’s creepy Gothic mansion, Nellie is soon confronted by local snake oil salesman Lonnie Baxter, who considers her property his birthright.

But Redfern soon learns that the land he’s defiling in the name of profits demands more sacrifice than mere greed can satisfy. In the same place circa 1917, Nellie’s grandfather August Redfern and his wife, Euphemia, launch a turpentine enterprise in the southern wilds and soon bear twins Charlie and Hank-Hank is Nellie’s father. The prime narrative finds Nellie Gardner in 1989 nursing wounds both fresh and long calloused as she shepherds her son, Max, to Georgia, well away from her abusive husband, Wade Gardner, an academic with an ill temper.

Greed, trespass, revenge, and obsession provide the emotional palette for this breathless, wide-eyed horror fable that chronicles the unforgivable trespasses that cost multiple generations their souls. and a whispering sense that something is not quite right about them, despite (or maybe because of) the terrible passion to be with them that they can exert on anybody at will.Ī thrilling, twisting, novel that is as seductive and glamorous as the Hollow sisters themselves.A woman fleeing an abusive relationship carries her 11-year-old son to an even more dangerous place: home. Almost nothing, Apart from, for example, the little scar that had appeared in the hollow of their throats. And when they came back, one month later, with no memory of where they had been, it was as if nothing had changed. Because one day the three Hollow sisters simply disappeared. They move through the corridors like sharks, the other little fish parting around them, whispering behind their backs.Īnd everyone knows who the Hollow sisters are. The Hollow sisters don't have friends - they don't need them. They have black eyes and hair as white as milk. The Hollow sisters - Vivi, Grey and Iris - are as seductively glamorous as they are mysterious. 'This story will steal up your spine, slip beneath your skin, and stick to you like honey.' - Samantha Shannon

The hollow sisters book