Stealing another professor's wife is not the best way to make it to the top in the academic world. Blackballed at every campus where he applies, Frank Nichols finally decides that he will have to make a living doing something other than teaching. Taking Dora with him, Frank leaves the North for a foreign environment to them both--deep in the Old South. For Frank has a secret. His great grandfather was the notorious Lucian Savoyard, known for his savagery towards his slaves before and after the Civil War. The stories of his cruelty are still whispered. Frank plans to write a book about Lucian and if it is successful, move Dora out of the hot, humid place he has brought her to.

Dora gets a job teaching and the couple are welcomed into the community. The townspeople are good folk, focused on working, family and God. But there are hints that there is something else under the smiles. The way that people turn away when Lucian's name is mentioned. The fact that hogs are set loose in a monthly ceremony that no one wants to talk about.

When Frank tries to explore and find the ruins of the old plantation house, he finds unsettling sights. The atmosphere once he gets over the river is tense and foreboding. He encounters a naked boy whose gaze and malevolence is disturbing and that hastens his departure. Townspeople start to have unsettling encounters and then random violence starts. What has Frank's arrival set loose?

This is one of the scariest novels I've ever read. Buehlman is a master writer, setting the environment of small town, sleepy Georgia town successfully. The horror starts as a series of slightly unsettling occurrences and then roars to life with can't put down horror writing. Readers will turn the last page sure that they won't forget this book anytime soon. This book is recommended for horror readers.

This had the potential to be a fabulous book.. Instead, it left readers wanting something else. The first half of the book meanders along not really doing anything. Characters aren't being developed. No base work is being established for what is to come. I will leave it there.

Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman (Ace, Sept. 2011)-When Frank Nichols and his wife Dora move into his aunt’s house in rural Whitbrow, Georgia, they’re eager for a fresh start. Frank plans to write a book about the nearby Savoyard Plantation, which belonged to his great-grandfather, and Dora will teach at the local school. They quickly settle into the rhythm of small town life and find the people to be friendly and welcoming, and in particular, Frank befriends the local eccentric (and taxidermist), a man named Martin Cranmer, who sees in Frank a fellow academic mind and spirit. Frank knows he must begin writing his novel, but first he needs to find a guide willing to take him across the river to comb the woods for the remains of his great-grandfather’s plantation. This isn’t going to be easy, because Whitbrow’s citizenry is wary of those woods, and Frank thinks he understands why. They’re overgrown, very thick, and quite intimidating, but really, it’s the history of the plantation that gives them their undeniable menace. His great-grandfather was a slave-owner of the cruelest sort and his depravity has not been forgotten. So, Frank must make the journey himself, and it’s on this first excursion that Frank discovers all may not be well in Whitbrow.

Those Across the River takes place in the 30s, about 17 years since the end of WWI, and Frank, in fact, is a veteran that is still haunted by the war and the death of his best friend, a haunting which manifests itself in vivid, terrible dreams. These dreams soon take a backseat, however, to the terror that Frank and Dora find themselves embroiled in after a very fateful decision is made to do away with a long held tradition in Whitbrow. I’m being vague because I really don’t want to spoil the hair raising fun of realizing exactly what it is that lurks in those dark woods, and the ties that bind it to Savoyard Plantation.


Those Across the River is Christopher Buehlman’s first novel, but you’d never know it. It has an undeniable mid twentieth century literary sensibility that only serves to highlight the visceral horror that lurks alongside this seemingly bucolic southern town. Speaking of southern, Buehlman gets the rural, post-Depression setting exactly right, and provides an almost dreamlike intro to a decidedly gut-punching finale.

I loved this book. It’s everything I want in horror and while he explores some hard to read stuff, like the treatment of slaves at the hand of Frank’s grandfather, it’s not gratuitous, rather it’s an exploration of the power of cruelty and its ability to twist something into the foulest sort of evil. One particularly harrowing scene is actually in a convalescent home where Frank interviews a few people who were privy to his great-grandfather’s dark deeds. Buehlman knows how to build menace like a pro, and this book has some of the creepiest scenes I’ve ever read. If you’re a reader of horror and of the things that go bump, you’ll probably start to suspect what lurks across the river, but it doesn’t make the reveal any less horrifying, or ultimately, tragic. I finished this one in one sitting and moved right along to The Necromancer’s House, kicking myself the whole time about the fact that these books have been on my shelf for ages and I’m just now getting around to them. Shame on me. Don’t miss this one.