Description: "Outstanding . . . Following writers like Richard Matheson and Shirley Jackson, Dan Chaon writes in the spooky tradition of suburban gothic. . . . An unreliable narrator can often feel like a cheap trick in the novelist''s playbook, but Mr. Chaon employs it masterfully, integrating unreliability into the book''s very typography. . . . Mr. Chaon''s writing is cool and precise, but his story is thrillingly unstable. It also boasts, at the end, a traditional horror-novel payoff I didn''t see coming--Stephen King couldn''t have done it better." -- The Wall Street Journal "One of the best thrillers I''ve encountered in a very, very long time, Dan Chaon''s latest novel will chill you to the bone and keep you guessing at every turn." -- Newsweek "If you''re up for being caught in a seamy heartland underbelly of fear, superstition, and paranoia, with side excursions through urban legend and recovered-memory hysteria, Ill Will is your book. . . . Chaon''s powers of description are impressive. . . . His knack for leaving sentences tellingly unfinished and thoughts menacingly incomplete . . . is perfect." -- The Boston Globe "Reading a truly terrifying novel can make you feel like you''re drowning: As much as you may want to surface and catch your breath, the plot holds you in its grip. . . . As Chaon moves nimbly between viewpoints, calling memories and relationships into question, a powerful undercurrent of dread begins to form beneath the story, slowly but inexorably pulling you under." -- Entertainment Weekly "Imagine the shower scene in Psycho, extended across eleven sections and three decades, with multiple unsolved mysteries. That''s the level of intensity Chaon achieves in this dark, provocative thriller." --BBC "[A] murder mystery that''s also a chilling investigation of the fallibility of memory and the damage inflicted by family secrets . . . In the complexity of its characters and the evocativeness of its themes, Ill Will successfully slips over the wall some would erect between literary fiction and the mystery genre. . . . Chaon faithfully carries out his responsibility to keep the mystery plots . . . simmering in a pressure cooker of suspense and emotion. While doing so, he manages to summon the atmospheres of Truman Capote''s In Cold Blood and Thomas Harris''s The Silence of the Lambs. " -- Shelf Awareness "In Chaon''s capable hands, [ Ill Will ] is a brilliant depiction of mental illness. Not a pretty picture, but masterfully painted. . . . It''s a murder mystery and a literary thriller, a multilayered nonlinear narrative and a psychological portrait of the dark side of human nature. You''ll lose track of the number of deaths, but you''ll remember the daring storytelling and the skillful treatment of characters who live with repressed memories." -- BookPage "Chilling." -- Real Simple , "The Best New Books to Read This Month" "A menacing, gripping story about a psychologist, his murdered family, serial killers, and satanic rituals." -- San Diego Magazine , "5 Books to Read in March" "Intensely readable . . . In this creepy yet fascinating work, with a bleak Ohio wintery landscape as backdrop, Chaon creates a world of tragedy, disease, and drug abuse right out of today''s news and makes it real while keeping readers guessing on many levels." -- Library Journal (starred review) "As often happens in Chaon''s books, you''ll be gripped by the story and the characters from the first page, and then all of a sudden you suspect that nothing is as it seems, and you''re sucked in even further." -- The Millions , "Most Anticipated" "Lauded literary author Chaon tackles the thriller genre, with this tale of a psychologist whose adopted brother is released from prison. Ideally, this will be the rare read that is all pleasure, no guilt." -- New York Magazine , "The Anticipation Index" "Dan Chaon was already a master of the short story well before he wrote his tense and delightfully twisted thriller, Await Your Reply. Ill Will finds Chaon back in thriller territory, with an even more propulsive narrative. It''s one of those books that looks big and heavy, but with pacing so tight it will likely only take a couple of days to read." --Vulture, "25 of the Most Anticipated Book Releases for 2017" "Chaon has created another of those twilight realms of which he is an indisputable master. The book''s characters plumb the depths of deception and surpass all established measures of instability and dysfunction. . . . If the definition of eeriness is indeed ''strange, suspicious, and unnatural,'' the definers of the genre (Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, Shirley Jackson, Peter Straub, etc.) have a worthy heir in Dan Chaon." -- Booklist "Exceptional and emotionally wrenching . . . With impressive skill, across multiple narratives that twine, fracture, and reset, Chaon expertly realizes his singular vision of American dread." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A dark genre-bending thriller . . . Chaon has mastered multiple psychologically complex and often fearsome characters. A shadowy narrative that''s carried well by the author''s command and insight." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Dan Chaon''s new novel is subtly, steadily unnerving--like a scalpel slipping under your skin and prying it, ever so slowly, from the muscle beneath. Ill Will is a dark Mbius strip of a thriller that will leave you questioning what''s perceived and what''s imagined, and whether the reverberations of tragedy ever truly come to an end." --Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You " Ill Will not only confirms Chaon as among our country''s finest writers but makes clear that he is one of our bravest and most inventive. He embraces risks that would have most novelists turning pale and making the sign of the cross. It''s stunning. Read it right now." --Peter Straub, author of The Throat "Dan Chaon''s darkly stunning Ill Will ensnares you from its very first pages. It''s both a bone-chilling literary thriller and a complicated tale of family secrets and the strange and dangerous paths grief and guilt can take us on--and it is not to be missed." --Megan Abbott, author of You Will Know Me "''I believe in bad places,'' one narrator of Ill Will confesses, and he''s right. Dan Chaon''s damaged characters stalk the elusive truth and what may be a serial killer through a nightmarish Cleveland populated by drug addicts and sexual predators. Intimate and unsparing, this is one of the creepiest books I''ve ever read." --Stewart O''Nan, author of Songs for the Missing " Ill Will is a literary masterwork, and that rare, true psychological thriller that comes along once in a decade. This novel may be the most honest exploration of deceit ever written." --Alissa Nutting, author of Tampa "This novel is brilliant, beautiful, and terrifying. Dan Chaon has written a tender, masterful family story and injected it with a cardiac arrest of a plot. Ill Will keeps you up late into the night, swelling your heart and turning your blood to ice." --Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Euphoria

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