Cornbones
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About
If you take from it, it will take from you...
Henry Rustin’s luck has run out, perhaps for the last time. Little does he know his troubles have only begun. When a last-chance horse bet goes awry, he skips town to outpace the mob, heading to yet another easy-money opportunity. It’s in a place where they’ll never find him—a tiny Pennsylvania farming town named Harveston. But the longer he stays, the more he realizes the townsfolk, with their strange customs and superstitions, live in fear of something hidden and deadly—a vengeful presence that hunts for blood amid the lonely, dried-up cornfields. “If you take from it, it will take from you,” the townsfolk warn. When Henry tries to sell an inherited farmhouse to pay off the mob and start his life over, he learns that there’s no going back. No one has ever left the forgotten little town without paying the ultimate price.
Praise for this book
"Timothy Roderick's Cornbones is a superb novel of folk horror, with a very strong cast, an absolutely creepy supernatural threat, almost all transpiring in a claustrophobic 1930s setting, from the LA underworld to a ghostly strange town from which no one can leave... it's a true pleasure that the writing is cinematic and everything can be visualized with ease and great satisfaction! ...[With] totally sudden and surprising turns, tension keeps increasing and the story never stops being utterly engrossing and captivating; how does that even happen? Great storytelling skills - that's how!" ★★★★★
“Like his other works in the genre, Cornbones isn't swimming in violence and gore. Roderick is far more interested in the slow burn and the gradual rise of fear that gives way, eventually, to terror. This is where his clever use of supernatural understanding pays off, taking what is usually read about as the bygone mythology of days past and breathing a feeling of vitality into them before siccing them on a (relatively) modern framework.” ★★★★★
"In the grand, uncanny genre of folk horror, Cornbones by Timothy Roderick stands out as a modern classic. With pagan trappings reminiscent of The Wicker Man, the story lures the reader to the early twentieth century rural town of Harveston, an eerie place where people enter but are never seen to return. Those who seek to escape their fate in the larger world by fleeing to Harveston soon find that there is no escape from certain dark forces…. Once you have gazed into the town’s dark secrets, there’s no going back!" ★★★★★
"Cornbones made me realize the way in which 1930s America has a mythic quality. This is a gripping, creepy tale that I found hard to put down. Apparently, you don't need deep roots in the soil for something malevolent to grow there. Corn roots go plenty deep enough." ★★★★★
"The deliciously claustrophobic Cornbones by Timothy Roderick is set in the remote rural town of Harveston during the 1930s, a place which readily welcomes the visitor, but is slightly more reluctant to let them go. The genres of faery lore and horror are seamlessly blended in this tense, dark, page-turning ride into the unknown." ★★★★★
“Timothy Roderick, in his novel Cornbones, creates a modern Folk Tale of horror that will leave you gasping for breath until the very last page. A page turner with unsettling themes, Cornbones transports the reader to 1930s Harveston, a town of dark secrets, most of which are hidden away in the surrounding cornfields. I suggest checking the map, then locking the car doors before venturing offroad into this chiller.” ★★★★★