Unlike Jack Ketchum’s earlier novel, LADIES NIGHT, his newest one, RIGHT TO LIFE, definitely has the shoe on the other foot as a pregnant woman becomes the victim of a deranged married couple that kidnap her right off the street and hold her captive for several months while she’s forced to endure their bizarre SM games.

The 139-page novella starts off with Sara Foster on her way to an abortion clinic to do away with the unwanted child that she’s now carrying. Before Sara can even enter the clinic, she’s grabbed and sedated by Stephen and Katherine Teach—a couple who’s unable to have children—and taken to their home where she’s held as a prisoner. The couple intends to hold Sara until the baby is born and then kill her. Stephen, however, has other plans for his beautiful captive as well. He’s going to get the most out Sara’s luscious body by using her to fulfill his own perverted desires. Forcing her to submit in whatever sexual manner he chooses, she’s mentally and physically tortured on almost a daily basis. Even Stephen’s wife decides to get in on the action by making the prisoner her sex slave when the hubby begins to lose interest after a few months have past.

Sara instinctively knows that she has to find a way out before it’s too late, but time is her worse enemy as she grows bigger and more powerless with her pregnancy. She also understands that if she does manage to escape, the couple may very well come after her. This leaves her with just one option—to kill them first!

RIGHT TO LIFE will shock you to the core as it depicts one’s person’s attempt to survive unimaginable torture and humiliation in order to keep from being killed. Mr. Ketchum never pulls his punches with the violence and craziness. His prose is fast moving and creates stark images that are mind numbing. The reader is quickly carried into this dark world of depravity and made to realize that anyone can be a potential victim when least expected. The characters are well drawn, but it’s the Techs that really steal the show. This is one psychotic couple you wouldn’t want to have as next-door neighbors! All in all, RIGHT TO LIFE delivers in full form. Strong in sexual content, it’s not for the faint-hearted or those with a queasy stomach.

One final note, this edition also contains two extra short stories. The first is “Brave Girl” and it deals with a four-year-old child whose mother has fallen in the bathtub and is now unconscious. The second short story is “Returns” which is slightly different from the author’s normal subject matter. It centers on the spirit of a recently deceased man who returns home to his hateful wife, hoping to stop her from killing his loving cat. These two short stories are a nice bonus for the fans of Jack Ketchum.

For years Ketchum (Peaceable Kingdom) and Lee (City Infernal) have written taboo-breaking horror fiction that's invariably provocative and sometimes good taste-challenged. This collection of their five collaborative stories is the literary equivalent of a frat-house Halloween party, full of cheesy shocks, raunchy sex and gross-out humor. "I'd Give Anything for You" and "Love Letters from the Rain Forest" have carbon copy plots involving nymphomaniacal young women who spurn wimpy suitors for studly hunks and pay for their choice with grisly fates. "Eyes Left" delivers more of the same, offering its account of an alluring female zombie who turns tables on a group of drooling barflies as a morality tale on the wrongness of sexual objectification. The title story, about a man unhinged in waking life by a secret existence lived in his slumbers, relies on a trite narrative shortcut-a tape recorder that catches the truth while he sleeps-to unravel its mystery. Only "Masks," about magically endowed masks that bring out the subconscious impulses of an intimate couple, succeeds in conveying the strangeness of uncanny experience. The book also includes first drafts of two stories, one by each of the authors, that show Lee to be the more prone of the pair to inventive descriptions of bodily functions. This book is unlikely to earn either author new readers, but neither is it likely to deter the hardcore fans at whom it clearly is aimed.

Features a 3,000 word Introduction by Stephen King!

THE AUTHOR'S REVISED EDITION, IN PAPERBACK FOR THE FIRST TIME! Greece. Ancient land of mystery, legend and myth. It is here that businessman Jordan Chase visits an historic tomb, only to experience a dark vision of the future. And it is here, amidst the beauty of the landscape, that Lelia, a gorgeous but dangerous woman, befriends a group of tourists to lure them into a nightmare of pain and terror. She lives to seduce and destroy, to feed off her human prey. Lelia is more than myth, more than superstition. Lelia is deadly. *** From Publishers Weekly Stoker-winner Ketchum isn't known for novels dealing with the supernatural, but in this revised edition of a 1989 paperback, he demonstrates that this has nothing to do with lack of ability. Ketchum does here for Greece what Lovecraft did for New England and Stoker did for Transylvania, creating a landscape imbued with a numinous quality that's simultaneously beautiful and terrible. Jordan Chase owes his success as a businessman to his sensitivity to ancient sacred places. When he visits the tomb of Agamemnon, he experiences a prophetic vision. Simultaneously, an attractive but disturbed woman, Lelia, begins to insinuate herself into the lives of a group of tourists. At first her presence is merely disruptive, but it later becomes destructive. Unknown perhaps even to herself, Lelia has tapped into the mystical energy of Greece and has become an avatar of the goddess known variously as Selene, Artemis-and Hecate. When she dies accidentally, her full potential is unleashed as she strides forth, resurrected and transformed. Ketchum reveals a real understanding of the mysteries of Greek mythology, including the bloodthirstiness that Bullfinch underplayed, and he builds to a climax that's both logical and exciting. Fans of contemporary horror and of the classic supernatural novel will be pleased. *** Ketchum does here for Greece what Lovecraft did for New England and Stoker did for Transylvania. -Publishers Weekly Jack Ketchum is one of America's best and most consistent writers of contemporary horror fiction. -Bentley Little Jack Ketchum is a master of suspense and horror of the human variety. -Midwest Book Review

From Publishers Weekly

For years Ketchum (Peaceable Kingdom) and Lee (City Infernal) have written taboo-breaking horror fiction that's invariably provocative and sometimes good taste-challenged. This collection of their five collaborative stories is the literary equivalent of a frat-house Halloween party, full of cheesy shocks, raunchy sex and gross-out humor. "I'd Give Anything for You" and "Love Letters from the Rain Forest" have carbon copy plots involving nymphomaniacal young women who spurn wimpy suitors for studly hunks and pay for their choice with grisly fates. "Eyes Left" delivers more of the same, offering its account of an alluring female zombie who turns tables on a group of drooling barflies as a morality tale on the wrongness of sexual objectification. The title story, about a man unhinged in waking life by a secret existence lived in his slumbers, relies on a trite narrative shortcut-a tape recorder that catches the truth while he sleeps-to unravel its mystery. Only "Masks," about magically endowed masks that bring out the subconscious impulses of an intimate couple, succeeds in conveying the strangeness of uncanny experience. The book also includes first drafts of two stories, one by each of the authors, that show Lee to be the more prone of the pair to inventive descriptions of bodily functions. This book is unlikely to earn either author new readers, but neither is it likely to deter the hardcore fans at whom it clearly is aimed.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Both (Ketchum and Lee) are supremely entertaining... this is a slick effort that brilliantly melds their styles and themes. -- Chi Magazine

Tremendous talent is not even a strong enough word for what has been trapped within these pages. -- Horror-Web.com

Product Description

As her husband descends into insanity, Lydia Danse becomes determined to protect her beloved young son from his father, but a possessive Arthur Danse refuses to give up on the boy he considers his property.

The Woman by Jack Ketchum & Lucky McKee is the powerful story of the last survivor of a feral tribe of cannibals who have terrorized the east coast from Maine into Canada. Badly wounded in a battle with police, she takes refuge in a cave overlooking the sea. Christopher Cleek is a slick, amoral,and unstable country lawyer who sees her and decides to capture her, tame her and maker her his own.

Now I’m way beyond confusion.

Now I’m scared.

I’ve slid down the rabbit-hole and what’s down there is dark and serious. This is not play-acting or some waking bad dream she’s having. She’s changed, somehow overnight. I don’t know how I know this but I sense it as surely as I sense my own skin. This is not Sam, my Sam, wholly sane and firmly balanced. Capable of tying off an artery as neatly as you’d thread a belt through the loops of your jeans.

And now I’m shivering too.

In some fundamental way she’s changed…

Los suburbios en una ciudad cualquiera de los Estados Unidos en los años 50.Calles sombreadas, con el césped bien cortado, árboles en líneas perfectas y casas acogedoras. Un lugar tranquilo donde crecer, siempre que no seas la adolescente Meg o su hermana tullida Susan.En una calle sin salida, en un oscuro y húmedo sótano de la casa Chandler, Meg y Susan, están cautivas a manos de una tía que está cayendo progresivamente en la locura. Una locura que está trasmitiendo a su familia, y finalmente al barrio entero

«¿Quién es el escritor americano más sobrecogedor? Probablemente, Jack Ketchum, el forajido escritor de novelas de terror cuya estremecedora primera novela, Al acecho, está finalmente disponible sin censura. Ketchum se ha convertido en un héroe para todos aquellos que escribimos relatos de terror y suspense. Es, sencillamente, uno de los mejores del género». —Stephen King«Ketchum es el más interesante exponente actual del terror psicológico, físico y realista». —Qué Leer«Al acecho sigue siendo una influencia capital para el terror actual. Solamente una novela articulada con pericia y verdadera emoción puede proyectar una sombra tan larga, y la obra de Ketchum tiene ambas». —Publishers WeeklySeptiembre. Una bella editora neoyorquina se retira a una solitaria cabaña, en la colina de una tranquila ciudad costera: Dead River, en temporada baja, donde espera la llegada de su hermana y amigos. Cerca, una familia de caníbales salvajes está al acecho en el sombrío bosque que la rodea, observando y esperando que salga la luna y caiga la noche… Y en pocas horas, cinco personas civilizadas y sofisticadas, así como un viejo y cansado sheriff aprenderán cuán primitivo somos debajo de la superficie, y que no existen límites ante el deseo de sobrevivir.