A short life of the author
Peter Straub (1943–2022) was born on 2 March 1943 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Columbia, and lived for several years in Dublin and London before returning to the United States.
Life and Career
Ghost Story (1979) — about a group of elderly men in a small New York town who share a dark secret — was his breakthrough. It is a sophisticated reworking of the ghost story tradition, densely layered and structurally ambitious. Shadowland (1980) — about two boys who spend a summer with a master magician — is his most atmospheric novel.
The Blue Rose trilogy — Koko (1988), Mystery (1990), and The Throat (1993) — blends crime fiction, horror, and literary metafiction in the fictional city of Millhaven. Koko — about Vietnam veterans hunting a serial killer — was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. His collaborations with Stephen King — The Talisman (1984) and Black House (2001) — are major works of fantasy.
Major Works and Themes
Straub wrote about trauma, memory, storytelling, and the way the past erupts into the present. His horror fiction is denser and more allusive than most genre work, drawing on Henry James, Poe, and modernist fiction.
Key Works
- Ghost Story (1979)
- Koko (1988)
Collecting Straub
Ghost Story first edition (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979) in fine condition with dust jacket brings $100–$300. The Talisman (Viking/Putnam, 1984) signed by both Straub and King brings $300–$800. Straub died in 2022.
Bibliography
| Title | Year | Publisher | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| Black House Straub and King's sequel to The Talisman — Jack Sawyer, now a retired homicide detective, is drawn back into the Territories when a serial killer in small-town Wisconsin proves to be an agent of the Crimson King; darker and more complex than its predecessor. | 2001 | Random House | English |
| Floating Dragon Straub's most extravagant horror novel — a Connecticut suburb is attacked simultaneously by a toxic chemical leak and an ancient supernatural evil, producing a nightmare vision of suburban America coming apart; Straub at his most excessive and his most frightening. | 1983 | Putnam | English |
| Ghost Story Straub's breakthrough novel — five elderly men in a small New York town share a terrible secret, and an ancient evil returns to claim them; a literary horror novel that transcends genre through its prose quality, its structural complexity, and its meditation on storytelling itself. | 1979 | Coward, McCann & Geoghegan | English |
| The Hellfire Club Straub's literary thriller set in 1950s Connecticut — a pregnant woman is terrorized by forces connected to her husband's mysterious past; a novel about the dark side of American postwar prosperity, combining domestic suspense with historical conspiracy. | 1996 | Random House | English |
| In the Night Room Straub's metafictional companion to lost boy lost girl — a novelist discovers that the character in his new book may be a real person, or that reality itself may be a fiction; Straub's most experimental novel, dissolving the boundary between author, character, and world. | 2004 | Random House | English |
| Julia Straub's first horror novel — a woman flees her domineering husband after their daughter's death and moves into a London house that seems to contain the spirit of a malevolent child; an early work that already shows Straub's gift for atmospheric dread and psychological complexity. | 1975 | Coward, McCann & Geoghegan | English |
| Koko Straub's masterpiece — four Vietnam veterans reunite to hunt a serial killer they believe is a former member of their platoon; a novel about trauma, memory, and the way war deforms everyone it touches, written with the density and ambition of serious literary fiction. | 1988 | Dutton | English |
| Mr. X Straub's Lovecraftian noir — a man returns to his hometown to discover the identity of his father and finds himself drawn into a world of cosmic horror, secret families, and the legacy of a Lovecraft-obsessed sorcerer; Straub's most explicit engagement with the weird fiction tradition. | 1999 | Random House | English |
| Mystery The second novel in Straub's Blue Rose trilogy — a boy on a Caribbean island witnesses a murder and is drawn into the world of a retired detective who teaches him that nothing is what it appears; a coming-of-age mystery that explores how stories shape perception. | 1990 | Dutton | English |
| Shadowland Straub's novel of dark magic and storytelling — two schoolboys spend a summer at the estate of one's magician uncle, where stage illusion becomes genuine sorcery and the boundary between performance and reality dissolves; a meditation on the power and danger of narrative. | 1980 | Coward, McCann & Geoghegan | English |
| The Talisman Straub's epic collaboration with Stephen King — a twelve-year-old boy journeys across America and its dark parallel world (the Territories) to find a talisman that can save his dying mother; a quest fantasy that combines King's populist energy with Straub's literary sophistication. | 1984 | Viking Press | English |