This month’s Book Cover Spotlight falls on the cover of a formerly out-of-print horror novel turned ebook and trade paperback by Scott Nicholson called The Red Church.
The trade paperback reprint of The Red Church has been out for a little while, the ebook a little longer but I missed both until last week as I tried to reconnect with Twitter (still working on that) and a brief conversation led me to Scott Nicholson’s website.
The Red Church was my first exposure to Scott’s writing and I’m glad to see it get a new lease on life.
The art work for the mass market paperback, published by Kensington Books, was not memorable, although the story certainly is. This new cover made for the ebook and then used for the trade paperback is very intriguing.
In Neil Jackson’s version of the Red Church, instead of using a realistic little church building, he creates a red and pink gothic church with a turret on one side and a small oval stain glass window above the door. However, after that the building takes a U-turn into the Twilight Zone.
Opposite the left turret is a tall tree that rises above the building. If there is a right turret — and I think there isn’t — it’s invisible against the tree. The first thing that attracted my attention was the door to the church — more an unsymmetrical cave mouth than a door — hidden in shadow
In the story the Red Church appears much like any other church building. However, Neil Jackson’s painting is so much more suggestive of what the place is and what it means to Ronnie Day and Sheriff Frank Littlefield that it’s a perfect cover. The fact that it lures the reader in with a promise of eerie strangeness ain’t bad either.
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The Red ChurchAuthor: Nicholson, Scott |
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The Red ChurchAuthor: Nicholson, Scott |
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Nominated for the 2002 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel A boy and a sheriff must solve the mystery of a haunted Appalachian church after a mysterious preacher returns to town. “Hold onto your pants, because Nicholson is about to scare them off.” — J.A. Konrath, Origin For 13-year-old Ronnie Day, life is full of problems: Mom and Dad have separated, his brother Tim is a constant pest, Melanie Ward either loves him or hates him, and Jesus Christ won’t stay in his heart. Plus he has to walk past the red church every day, where the Bell Monster hides with its wings and claws and livers for eyes. But the biggest problem is that Archer McFall is the new preacher at the church, and Mom wants Ronnie to attend midnight services with her. Sheriff Frank Littlefield hates the red church for a different reason. His little brother died in a freak accident at the church twenty years ago, and now Frank is starting to see his brother’s ghost. And the ghost keeps demanding, “Free me.” People are dying in Whispering Pines, and the murders coincide with McFall’s return. The Days, the Littlefields, and the McFalls are descendants of the original families that settled the rural Appalachian community. Those old families share a secret of betrayal and guilt, and McFall wants his congregation to prove its faith. Because he believes he is the Second Son of God, and that the cleansing of sin must be done in blood. “Sacrifice is the currency of God,” McFall preaches, and unless Frank and Ronnie stop him, everybody pays. |
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December 2009 (Kindle — Haunted Computer)
December 2009 (eBook — Haunted Computer)
December 2009 (eBook — Haunted Computer)- January’s Book Cover Spotlight: Siren
- September’s Book Cover Spotlight: Pork Pie Hat
- February’s Book Cover Spotlight: A Choir of Ill Children
- March’s Book Cover Spotlight: Seldom Seen in August
- April’s Book Cover Spotlight: In the Midnight Museum
- May’s Book Cover Spotlight: Butterfly
- June’s Book Cover Spotlight: The Red Church
- July’s Book Cover Spotlight: Johnny Halloween
- August’s Book Cover Spotlight: The Condemned
- December’s Book Cover Spotlight: Spore
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