In season, there's the tourists. Off season, there's only the locals--and visitors like Carla. She's on a working holiday, editing a book, but first she's got to clean up the house and play host to a bunch of friends. Nearby, a family of barbarous humans lurks in the woods, watching, waiting to feed their unnatural hunger...And within the next few hours, a group of sophisticated people will learn just how small a step it is from civilisation--to savagery...

Jack Ketchum is the pseudonym for a former actor, teacher, literary agent, lumber salesman, and soda jerk. He is also a former flower child and baby boomer who figures that in 1956 Elvis, dinosaurs and horror probably saved his life. His first novel, OFF SEASON, an updating of the Sawney Beane story, prompted the Village Voice to publicly scold its publisher in print for publishing violent pornography. He has always wondered what they would think of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR. His short story THE BOX won a 1994 Bram Stoker Award from HWA.