Straub, Peter

(US, 1943– )

Straub was born in Milwaukee and educated at the University of Wisconsin. He is best known for his horror novels. Begin with Shadow Land (1980), in which a young man is drawn into sorcery after attempting to protect a friend from a magician. Twenty years later, he fights for the freedom of his will. In Ghost Story (1979) a community struggles against a malevolent spirit taking the form of a beautiful woman. All its victims have guilty secrets concerning women. Mystery (1989) is set in a Caribbean resort for the very wealthy. After a brush with death, the young hero looks into a murder committed in 1925, and stumbles upon dangerous knowledge about some eminent residents. The Connecticut town in Floating Dragon (1982) is menaced by an evil visitation and the release into the environment of a lethally dangerous drug.

Stephen King, James Herbert, Dean R. Koontz. See SUPERNATURAL  DH