Jack Ketchum Books In Order
Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.Publication Order of Off Season Books
Off Season | (1980) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Offspring | (1991) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Woman | (2010) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
Laramie Plains | (1974) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Border Dawn | (1976) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Hide and Seek | (1980) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Dead or alive | (1982) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Guns of Amarillo | (1982) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Winchester pass | (1982) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Cover | (1987) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
She Wakes | (1989) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Girl Next Door | (1989) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Trail to Nowhere | (1991) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Joyride | (1994) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Stranglehold | (1995) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Only Child | (1995) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Red | (1996) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Ladies' Night | (1997) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Station Two | (2001) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Lost | (2001) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Old Flames | (2008) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Secret Life of Souls | (2016) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Publication Order of Collections
The Exit at Toledo Blade Boulevard | (1998) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Right to Life | (1998) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Broken on the Wheel of Sex | (1999) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Peaceable Kingdom | (2003) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Closing Time and Other Stories | (2007) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Triptych | (2012) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road | (2013) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Night Terrors III | (2014) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
What They Wrote | (2015) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
The Box | (1994) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Gone | (2000) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Haunt | (2001) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Crossings | (2003) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Weed Species | (2006) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Book of Souls | (2008) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
I'm Not Sam | (2012) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Notes from the Cat House | (2013) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Gorilla In My Room | (2019) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
Turning Japanese | (2013) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Writers On Writing | (2015) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Publication Order of Anthologies
Triage | (1990) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Deadly After Dark | (1994) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Vampire Detectives | (1995) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Fear the Fever | (1996) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Skull Full of Spurs: A Roundup of Weird Westerns | (2000) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
October Dreams | (2000) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourteenth Annual Collection | (2001) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Stranger: Dark Tales of Eerie Encounters | (2002) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Tales from a Darker State | (2003) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Fear Of The Unknown | (2005) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Masques V | (2006) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Mondo Zombie | (2006) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Best of Cemetery Dance II | (2008) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
In Laymon's Terms | (2008) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The World Is Dead | (2009) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
A Hacked-Up Holiday Massacre | (2011) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Slices of Flesh | (2012) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Horror for Good | (2012) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Psychos: Serial Killers, Depraved Madmen, and the Criminally Insane | (2012) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Chiral Mad | (2012) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Fear the Abyss | (2012) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Mister October, Volume II - An Anthology in Memory of Rick Hautala | (2013) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Chiral Mad 2 | (2013) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Turn Down the Lights | (2013) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Piercing the Darkness | (2014) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror | (2014) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Horror 101: The Way Forward | (2014) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Cemetery Dance: Issue 71 | (2014) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Suspended In Dusk | (2014) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Insidious Assassins | (2015) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Chiral Mad 3 | (2016) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Beast:Revelations - A Dark Ethology - Volume 2 | (2016) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Cemetery Riots | (2016) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Seas & Oceans | (2017) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Dark Places, Evil Faces | (2017) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Red Room Issue 1 | (2017) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Zippered Flesh 3 | (2017) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
VS: X: US vs UK Extreme Horror | (2017) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Chiral Mad 4: An Anthology of Collaborations | (2018) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
A New York State of Fright: Horror Stories from the Empire State Kindle Edition | (2019) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Freedom of Screech | (2019) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Dark Screams: Volume Three | (2021) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Jack Ketchum is the pen name of American horror novelist Dallas Mayr. Born in Livingstone, NJ, Ketchum has worked as a lumber sales representative, a teacher, and actor before becoming a novelist. As a teenager, he had the honor of meeting “Psycho” author, Robert Bloch, who would become his mentor and friend until his death in 1994.
He credits the chance acquaintance he made with Henry Miller while he was interning at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency as the turning point in his budding writing career. Henry Miller invited the young Ketchum into his Pacific Palisades home, and soon after became his agent, helping him publish his first novel “Off Season”.
His first novel Off Season went on to receive widespread popularity and critical acclaim. In fact, the book received extraordinary praise from none other than Stephen King at the 2003 National Book Awards. According to King, Off Season completely changed the horror novel landscape in a way that nobody had ever done until Clive Barker. It is not the first time that Jack Ketchum has received such glowing tribute from King, as the two have since become fast friends with a mutual respect for each other’s work.
Ketchum’s work has been compared to the works of other authors such as James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser and Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs. Unlike other horror novel writers, most of Ketchum’s work is inspired by true events. For instance, the Girl Next Door is based on the Sylvia Likens murder mystery of 1965. When he republished the novel as a special edition, he got King to write the preface. In one of the longest introductions of a book ever written by King, he asserted that the film adaptation was one of the genuinely shocking American movies ever made since “Henry: Portrait of a Serial” came out over two decades ago. Pushing the boundaries of the classic horror story, this film is not one for anyone that is easily disturbed. However, The Girl Next Door is perfect for the reader who is looking for the suburban style narrative that takes one into hell.
Ketchum’s books such as Peaceable Kingdom, Closing Time, and The Box have been honored with the Bram Stoker Award. With the increasing popularity of his novels, some of the novels were adapted into feature films. The Lost, his first novel to be made into a movie achieved cult status after becoming a runaway success in theaters. The adaptation of the highly controversial The Girl Next Door also did well in theaters. However, his most important work that catapulted him to critical and commercial success in the Box Office was the adaptation of the novel Red into film. The movie made by Magnolia Pictures starred Tom Sizemore and Brian Cox. After getting rave reviews at the Sundance Film festival, the movie went on to make a great showing at the Box Office US. Subsequent translations of the novel saw the novel make significant inroads internationally.
Still, Jack Ketchum was not done, as Lucky McKee’s adaptation of his novel The Woman into a film enjoyed even more commercial success. The New York Times had high praise for the adaptation asserting that, the perfect calibration of pace, the creation of powerful parables and the attention to detail in the film made Ketchum one of the best in his genre.
Ketchum currently lives in New York and continues to write novels, screenplays, short stories, reviews, and articles.
Jack Ketchum’s first horror novel, Off Season is one of the author’s most popular works. Published in 1980, the extreme violence and bleak vision of the novel is still as vivid and influential as ever. Ketchum writes a novel that demonstrates his expert articulation yet retains the emotional expression that makes the book a classic of remarkable elegance. The author is impressive in articulating the nature of evil and how the unity of the human spirit comes together to fight it in the narrative of a band of tourists captured by cannibals. While its structure is nothing original, what makes this novel different is that Ketchum explores the deeper issues of morality and evil issues and moves the story with such intelligence and ferocity that many other novelists fail to do. He uses vivid imagery in the portrayal of bloody battles between the cannibals and tourists, and the heartless consumption and torture of victims. The arbitrariness of who dies and who lives leaves the reader on the edge of their seat, as Ketchum sucks you in while always remaining in charge.
Hide and Seek published in 1984 is another popular novel by Jack Ketchum. Following in the footsteps of Off Season this is a gruesome novel that will captivate the horror novel enthusiast. Hide and Seek is one of Ketchum’s best novels being believable, scary, yet uplifting in the manner of the classic horror narrative. Set in Dead River a small town in Maine, the action of the novel mainly occurs during the hot summer months. The first part of the book is the story of Dan a local who bumps into visiting college students Steven, Kim, and Casey who become his friends. A few weeks later, Dan has sex with the beautiful Casey in the graveyard and declares that he has fallen for her. She tells him that years ago she and her younger brother had been victims of sexual abuse from their father that resulted in the death of her sibling. The experience is what made her adopt the risk taker attitude.
The second part of the novel builds on the tantalizing foundation of the first part. The four friends decide to go to a haunted house for a game of hide and seek. The game soon becomes weird then deadly, as they soon encounter the otherworldly occupants of the house. Forced to deal with sudden violence or die, the four friends must stand together and deal with what the haunted house throws at them. Similar to his first novel, Ketchum maintains the theme of the human spirit and the power it has in uniting people in times of adversity. The author is economical with words but still manages to create a story that tightens like a noose from page to page. Any horror novel buff will find this to be one of the finest works they will ever read.
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