Coven

By Edward Lee

1991

First Published

3.71

Average Rating

308

Number of Pages

9H24M

Audio Length

Born in darkness, they arise. Seductive angels of murder, madness, and horrors beyond imagining. COVEN Bathed in moonlight, they feed their darkest hungers in a festival of perversion and death, demented orgies that serve a cruel, unspeakable will... COVEN They are irresistible sirens in black, corrupting the living and raising the dead. Now the silent town of Exham will surrender to their loving embrace, their haunting beauty, and their ravenous need for human flesh. Surrender—and die... COVEN Beauty is only skin deep. More like a revved-up gross-out '70s B-movie, COVEN revels in its ultimate editorial no-no: it's science-fiction dropped into a contemporary horror plot, something that horror editors seem to never buy. Maybe this one sold...because it works. Originally entitled THE WOMEN IN BLACK, this "turgid," original take on the There's Something Fucked-Up At The College plot highlights Lee's gross-out skills early on and demonstrates that pulp horror writers really can create fresh, well-developed, easy-to-realize characters. Cameos of Lee's then-favorite beers—during his beer-snob days—appear in abundance, and Lovecraftian symbols abound (it's fun just picking them out), but wait till you meets the gals in this book. This is the only existing novel that Lee wants to sequelize.

Avg Rating

3.71

Number of Ratings

365

5 STARS

26%

4 STARS

34%

3 STARS

29%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Edward Lee

Author · 75 books

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. Edward Lee is an American novelist specializing in the field of horror, and has authored 40 books, more than half of which have been published by mass-market New York paperback companies such as Leisure/Dorchester, Berkley, and Zebra/Kensington. He is a Bram Stoker award nominee for his story "Mr. Torso," and his short stories have appeared in over a dozen mass-market anthologies, including THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES OF 2000, Pocket's HOT BLOOD series, and the award-wining 999. Several of his novels have sold translation rights to Germany, Greece, and Romania. He also publishes quite actively in the small-press/limited-edition hardcover market; many of his books in this category have become collector's items. While a number of Lee's projects have been optioned for film, only one has been made, HEADER, which was released on DVD to mixed reviews in June, 2009, by Synapse Films. Lee is particularly known for over-the-top occult concepts and an accelerated treatment of erotic and/or morbid sexual imagery and visceral violence. He was born on May 25, 1957 in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Bowie, Maryland. In the late-70s he served in the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division, in Erlangen, West Germany, then, for a short time, was a municipal police officer in Cottage City, Maryland. Lee also attended the University of Maryland as an English major but quit in his last semester to pursue his dream of being a horror novelist. For over 15 years, he worked as the night manager for a security company in Annapolis, Maryland, while writing in his spare time. In 1997, however, he became a full-time writer, first spending several years in Seattle and then moving to St. Pete Beach, Florida, where he currently resides. Of note, the author cites as his strongest influence horror legend H. P. Lovecraft; in 2007, Lee embarked on what he calls his "Lovecraft kick" and wrote a spate of novels and novellas which tribute Lovecraft and his famous Cthulhu Mythos. Among these projects are THE INNSWICH HORROR, "Trolley No. 1852," HAUNTER OF THE THRESHOLD, GOING MONSTERING, "Pages Torn From A Travel Journal," and "You Are My Everything." Lee promises more Lovecraftian work on the horizon.