No One Gets Out Alive: A Novel

by Adam Nevill

Overview

Adam Nevill's No One Gets Out Alive will chill you straight through to the core — a cold, merciless, fear-inducing nightmare to the last page. A word of caution, don't read this one in the dark.

Now a major motion picture on Netflix!

When Stephanie moves to the notoriously cheap Perry Bar neighborhood of Birmingham, she's just happy to find an affordable room for rent that's large enough not to deserve her previous room's nickname, "the cell." The eccentric — albeit slightly overly-friendly — landlord seems nice and welcoming enough, the ceilings are high, and all of the other tenants are also girls. Things aren't great, but they're stable. Or at least that's what she tells herself when she impulsively hands over enough money to cover the first month's rent and decides to give it a go.

But soon after she becomes uneasy about her rash decision. She hears things in the night. Feels them. Things...or people...who aren't there in the light. Who couldn't be there, because after-all, her door is locked every night, and the key is still in place in the morning. Concern soon turns to terror when the voices she hears and presence she feels each night become hostile. It's clear that something very bad has happened in this house. And something even worse is happening now. Stephanie has to find a way out, before whatever's going on in the house finds her first.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250092380
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/16/2016
Edition description:	Media Tie-in
Pages:	640
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Adam Nevill was born in Birmingham, England, in 1969, and grew up in England and New Zealand. A graduate of the University of St Andrews Masters programme, he is the author of The Ritual and Banquet for the Damned, an original novel of supernatural horror inspired by M. R. James and the great tradition of the British weird tale. In his working life he has endured a variety of occupations, including from 2000 to 2004 both nightwatchman and day porter in the exclusive apartment buildings of west London.

Editorial Reviews

"Stephanie is submerged in abject terror, bouncing from mundane despair to supernatural fright so quickly that the reader becomes disoriented-a sensation that only enhances the suspense ... a reading experience fraught with real chills." — Publishers Weekly

"A macabre, otherworldly tale of a young woman 'swallowed whole and alive by the horror that refused to be sated.'" — Kirkus

"This great big anvil of horror lands hard from the get-go," — Booklist

From the Publisher

2015-02-02
British author Nevill (House of Small Shadows, 2014, etc.) out-Kings Stephen in this intense tale of séances, houses of ill repute and pervert convicts captured by The Other.Stephanie Booth is "a minimum wage temp, who couldn't afford to go to university." She rents a room at 82 Edgehill Rd. in Birmingham—a dwelling once occupied by The Friends of Light spiritualist group and then by the Bennets, a midcentury father/son pair of pimps and murderers. The current landlord, Knacker McGuire, "bloodless face…slit-eyed sneer," gives Stephanie a room which "looked like the scene of a potential suicide following an occupant's long period of depression, isolation and poverty." But it's Knacker's cousin, Fergal, "haggard and feral," whose perversions reveal to Stephanie that she resides in a house of horrors, one inhabited by the spirit of Black Maggie, a creature rooted in ancient fertility rites. Stephanie's an empathetic protagonist, killing her way out of peril, but Nevill's most vivid character is Knacker, right down to his Brummie ("bovver wiv all vat") accent. Stephanie, free of the Edgehill horror, grows rich on book and film rights, reinventing herself as Amber Hare. However, even after settling in southern England, Stephanie's nightmarish apparitions convince her that "the poor souls...had followed her from their wretched graves in Edgehill Road." Overwhelmed by "fear, regret, anxiety, hope and despair," Stephanie/Amber learns "the Bennets and Fergal [were] mere tools, homicidal tools…for something that found them useful." Tensions are high, the settings are ominous, and Nevill even offers cogent social observations, such as Stephanie learning that "everything she took for granted…like cooperation and manners and civility and privacy and laws," is lost when notoriety arrives. A macabre, otherworldly tale of a young woman "swallowed whole and alive by the horror that refused to be sated."

Kirkus Reviews