Keeper of the Children (First Limited Edition, Signed)

HALLAHAN, William H. Keeper of the Children. Lakewood, Colorado: Centipede Press, 2022.

8vo. Original publisher's black cloth, titles in orange and red foil to spine, with colour illustration onlay to upper board. Colour illustrated dust jacket by David Ho. Red silk ribbon marker. Head and tail bands. Top edge stained. Illustrated endpapers, colour frontispiece, and interior illustrations throughout by David Ho. 256, [ii] pp., including new introduction by Michael Saler, colour facsimiles of earlier editions and photographs of the author, bonus essay 'The Making of a Suspense Novelist', and bonus short story 'Meet Me at the Grave'. Smyth-sewn. First Centipede Press edition. Limited to 400 numbered copies, this being number 163. Signed by introducer Michael Saler and illustrator David Ho on the limitation page, with a post-mortem facsimile signature of the author. First published by William Morrow, 1978.

William H. Hallahan (1925–2018) was a writer of the kind of occult thriller that flourished particularly in the 1970s — a decade in which American popular fiction was markedly preoccupied with the idea that malevolent supernatural forces might be operating beneath the surface of ordinary suburban life, and that the domestic security so central to the postwar American dream was peculiarly vulnerable to exactly that kind of penetration.

Keeper of the Children, first published in 1978, belongs firmly to that moment. When Eddie Benson's fourteen-year-old daughter Renni disappears and reappears in the streets of Philadelphia, Benson finds himself confronting a force of supernatural menace, one that operates through the minds of the young with terrifying effectiveness. The novel is a study in parental helplessness and the nature of cultish submission as much as a horror story, and its unsettling power derives as much from its social observation as from its supernatural machinery.

This Centipede Press editionhas been illustrated by David Ho, one of the most sought-after artists in prestige horror publishing, and features a new introduction by scholar Michael Saler and bonus material including an essay by Hallahan on his craft. Hallahan died in 2018; his facsimile signature on the limitation page makes this a posthumous memorial as well as a collector's edition.

Fine. Presenting as new.

This book is currently not on display in store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: rarebooks@harryhartog.com.au

Catalogue Number: HH000366