The Cabin at the End of the World: A Novel - Softcover

A propulsive, heart-palpitating novel of psychological suspense from the Bram Stoker Award–winning author of A Head Full of Ghosts

Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet lake in northern New Hampshire. A handful of miles from the Canadian border, far removed from the bustle of city life, cut off from the urgent hum of cell phones and from the internet, they are more than two miles away from their closest neighbors in either direction along an old dirt logging road.

On a cloudless summer day, as Wen catches grass-hoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen, but he is young—twenty-four and a half years old, he tells her—and friendly, with a warm and wide smile that wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen continue to talk and play, until three more strangers, two women and a man, all dressed like Leonard in jeans and button-down shirts, come down the road carrying strange, menacing objects.

In a panic, Wen tells Leonard that she must go back inside the cabin. But before she goes, her new friend tells her, “None of what’s going to happen is your fault. You haven’t done anything wrong, but the three of you will have to make some tough decisions. I wish with all my broken heart you didn’t have to.” As Wen sprints away to warn her parents, Leonard calls out, “Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world. Please.”

The Cabin at the End of the World is an unbearably tense, gripping tale of paranoia, sacrifice, apocalypse, and survival that escalates to a shattering conclusion, one in which the fate of a loving family and quite possibly all of humanity are entwined. Electrifying and haunting, it is a masterpiece of terror and suspense from the fantastically fertile imagination of Paul Tremblay.

Paul Tremblay has won the Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, and Massachusetts Book awards and is the author of The Cabin at the End of the World, Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, A Head Full of Ghosts, and the crime novels The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland. He is currently a member of the board of directors of the Shirley Jackson Awards, and his essays and short fiction have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly online, and numerous year’s-best anthologies. He has a master’s degree in mathematics and lives outside Boston with his family.