Disappearance at Devil's Rock: A Novel

Paul Tremblay

Jun 2016 · HarperAudio · Narrated by Erin Bennett

About this audiobook

A family is shaken to its core after the mysterious disappearance of a teenage boy in this eerie tale, a blend of literary fiction, psychological suspense, and supernatural horror from the author of A Head Full of Ghosts.

“A Head Full of Ghosts scared the living hell out of me, and I’m pretty hard to scare,” raved Stephen King about Paul Tremblay’s previous novel. Now, Tremblay returns with another disturbing tale sure to unsettle readers.

Late one summer night, Elizabeth Sanderson receives the devastating news that every mother fears: her thirteen-year-old son, Tommy, has vanished without a trace in the woods of a local park.

The search isn’t yielding any answers, and Elizabeth and her young daughter, Kate, struggle to comprehend Tommy’s disappearance. Feeling helpless and alone, their sorrow is compounded by anger and frustration: the local and state police have uncovered no leads. Josh and Luis, the friends who were the last to see Tommy before he vanished, may not be telling the whole truth about that night in Borderland State Park, when they were supposedly hanging out a landmark the local teens have renamed Devil’s Rock.

Living in an all-too-real nightmare, riddled with worry, pain, and guilt, Elizabeth is wholly unprepared for the strange series of events that follow. She believes a ghostly shadow of Tommy materializes in her bedroom, while Kate and other local residents claim to see a shadow peering through their windows in the dead of night. Then, random pages torn from Tommy’s journal begin to mysteriously appear—entries that reveal an introverted teenager obsessed with the phantasmagoric; the loss of his father, killed in a drunk-driving accident a decade earlier; a folktale involving the devil and the woods of Borderland; and a horrific incident that Tommy believed connects them.

As the search grows more desperate, and the implications of what happened become more haunting and sinister, no one is prepared for the shocking truth about that night and Tommy’s disappearance at Devil’s Rock.

Ratings and reviews

SPOILER ALERT!** kept my full attention from first page to the last. some what predictable but thatdoesn't take away the brilliance of the story/mystery at all! characters are 3 dimensional and complex...good to get to know. one tiny flaw in my opinion but maybe author did it in purpose...the crime...the actual progression of happenings leading to death, wasn't ever explained in detail or in general,only said the death occurred. As the reader,I wanted to finally know what exactly happened to Tommy that lead to his disfigured appearance and death. ok well one more flaw lol...too many loose threads that didn't get tied up by the end...was there a supernatural force at work?Tommy?another ghost?some of that paranormal stuff was explained but not all. otherwise a great book/story!

About the author

Paul Tremblay has won the Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, and Massachusetts Book Awards and is the New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie, The Beast You Are, The Pallbearers Club, Survivor Song, Growing Things and Other Stories, Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, A Head Full of Ghosts, and the crime novels The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland. His novel The Cabin at the End of the World was adapted into the Universal Pictures film Knock at the Cabin. Another is his first children’s book. He has been teaching high school math for a long, long time, and he lives outside Boston with his family.