Ash Wednesday is a thoughtful horror story about what happens to people when they are forced to gaze into the face of death and, specifically, the face of their own personal dead: their friends and family, those they believed to be dead and gone. Murders are revealed, rapes and other crimes. People despair, and try to create new lives out of the wreckage. Two of these are Bradley Meyers, a vet already driven half-crazy by his experiences in Vietnam, confronted by the sight of his dead son, and now barely capable of containing his rage, and Jim Callender, whose son has died in the same accident, for which he is partly responsible. As Callender sinks into guilt, Meyers moves toward murder.

“A riveting, descriptive account of the effect the dead have on the living…both thought-provoking and entertaining. I couldn’t put the book down.” Betty Saputo, Rave Reviews

“A strong if necessarily macabre and uncomfortable tale of moral import.” — Fritz Leiber

“Excellently written, painstakingly plotted, and thoroughly believable. A masterfully skillful book.” — Peter Crowther

“The jacket copy claims ‘Ash Wednesday is a powerful, literate work of fiction that addresses the fantastic and human character — one of those rare works of horror literature, such as Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House or Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, that transcends genre.’ Wow — a jacket quote that doesn’t lie!” — The Horror Show

“Disturbing, challenging, and anything but reassuring. A cold hard look at the everyday terrors of death, ghosts, and madness. A haunting vision of purgatory on earth.” — Ramsey Campbell

“Ash Wednesday is enough of a book to stand on its own without the intrusion of the supernatural. Yet its haunting image of the mute, motionless spirits that inhabit a small town remains lodged in the mind like a bullet in the brain. Chet Williamson has written a disturbingly memorable novel.” — Les Daniels

About the Author:

Chet Wiliamson sold hisfirst story in 1981. Since then he’s published twenty-five books and over a hundred short stories in anthologies and such magazines as The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and many others.

His work has been adapted for film and TV, and has been published worldwide. Mr. Williamson won the International Horror Guild Award, and been shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award (twice), the MWA’s Edgar, and the HWA’s Bram Stoker Award (six times). He write plays as well as fiction.