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139ac69
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It'll be your loss, Ethan. Day'll come, when he's grown and it's too late, that you'd give a kingdom to go back and spend a single hour with your son as a boy. To hold him. Read a book to him. Throw a ball with a person in whose eyes you can do no wrong. He doesn't see your failings yet. He looks at you with pure love and it won't last, so you revel in it while it's here." Ethan thinks often of that conversation, mostly when he's lying awak..
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Blake Crouch |
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6ea8da3
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He stopped listening an hour ago, when he discovered he could tune out completely as long as he interjected an "I hadn't thought of it that way" or "Hmm, interesting" every five minutes or so."
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Blake Crouch |
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926fded
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I wish we lived in a world where actions were measured by the intentions behind them.
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Blake Crouch |
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e5911c8
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Your sensitivity is overwhelming," Ethan said. "Someday remind me to explain to you what empathy is."
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Blake Crouch |
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fb4a4fb
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The world's a stage, and all the men and women merely.
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Blake Crouch |
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bb672a8
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The kids crawled into bed and Dee unlocked the door and went back outside. Walked down to the road and stood at the crest of the pass. Thirty-five miles away, Grand Teton punctured the bottom curve of the sun and the nearer peaks were catching alpenglow. The snow and the rock the color of peach skin.
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Blake Crouch |
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fb95206
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WELCOME TO WAYWARD PINES WHERE PARADISE IS HOME
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Blake Crouch |
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ce052fe
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Still he'd only missed his Bronco by a few hundred feet.
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Blake Crouch |
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40c7be5
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Grew up reading books where vampires were scary. This novel is an attempt to make them scary again. When I thought of the premise that became DRACULAS, I knew it needed to be a group project. Take four well-known horror authors, let them each create their own unique characters, and have them fight for their lives during a vampire outbreak at a secluded, rural hospital. This is NOT a collection of short stories. It's a single, complete novel..
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Blake Crouch |
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e5d0c11
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Fear suddenly wore him like a glove.
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Blake Crouch |
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063ca18
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There were moments when you saw the people you loved for who they really were, separate from the baggage of projection and shared histories. When you saw them with fresh eyes, as a stranger might, and caught the feeling of the first time you loved them. Before the tears and the armor chinks. When there was still the possibility of perfection. He had never had a clearer picture of his wife, had never loved her more--not even in the beginning..
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Blake Crouch |
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ba0561a
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A soldier shoved him forward, said, "Stand right there and don't fucking move." "Why?" "We have to inspect you." "For what?" "Shut the fuck up."
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Blake Crouch |
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ab8ce8f
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There was darkness everywhere human beings gathered.
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Blake Crouch |
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99172ba
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What I told you is the truth." "Really? You want to keep heading down that path? Because I went to the pub." Pope drummed his fingers on the tabletop. "They don't even have a female bartender on staff, and nobody saw you there four nights ago." "Somebody's lying." "So what I'm wondering is...why'd you really come to"
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Blake Crouch |
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60612f5
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Almost fifteen months he's been gone, and every day I wake up, I still don't believe this is really happening.
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Blake Crouch |
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56b7b04
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Her smile reminded Theresa of a movie star smile--toothy and wide, and if you stared too hard at it, not quite real.
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Blake Crouch |
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1235a44
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She loved at light-speed. No hesitation. No regrets. No conditions. No reservations. While he hoarded his chips and held a part of himself back, she went all in. Every time.
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Blake Crouch |
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8810900
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A question repeated in the back of Theresa's mind as she washed the purple stains from her hands. How did they finally break you?
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Blake Crouch |
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9bdd155
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I'm a special agent with the United States Secret Service." "You mean those guys who guard the president?" "That's only one of our duties."
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Blake Crouch |
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b48ae30
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Since the Industrial Revolution, we've treated our world like it was a hotel room and we were rock stars. But we aren't rock stars.
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Blake Crouch |
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6e717bc
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The way it watched him was unnerving--a definite intelligence all the more frightening because he couldn't know how deep it went.
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Blake Crouch |
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d51fd23
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YESTERDAY IS HISTORY. TOMORROW IS A MYSTERY. TODAY IS A GIFT. THAT'S WHY IT'S CALLED THE PRESENT.
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Blake Crouch |
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03ac17a
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It was the continuance of things that crushed her already broken heart. The gears of the world turning on while she lived with his absence like a black tumor in her chest, the grief so potent she could barely bring herself to breathe.
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Blake Crouch |
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08a8a68
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Blake Crouch is the author of over a dozen bestselling suspense, mystery, and horror novels. His short fiction has appeared in numerous short story anthologies, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Cemetery Dance, and many other publications. Much of his work, including the Wayward Pines series.
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Blake Crouch |
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54c203e
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I used to. When we were real people. When we could talk about the things in our hearts. You know this is the first real conversation I've had in years?
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Blake Crouch |
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3bf2cb0
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We are so fucking lost. Literally adrift in the nothing space between universes.
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Blake Crouch |
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d25b6d5
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Was there even a point to the creation of books and art when humanity lived on the precipice of extinction?
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Blake Crouch |
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c8cb654
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The twelve burros crane their scrawny necks in his direction when Brady emerges from the merc. He reaches into his greatcoat, pulls out a tin of Star Navy tobacco, and shoves a chaw between lips and gums gone blackish purple in the last year. "What the hell?" he whispers. When he delivered supplies two weeks ago, this little mining town was bustling. Now Abandon looms listless before him in the gloom of late afternoon, streets empty, snow b..
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Blake Crouch |
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20ed6c0
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For once, she knew what she had, the kind of man he was, even in the face of all this. Knew she didn't need another thing for the rest of her life except to be with him. There was such a peace that accompanied that knowledge.
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Blake Crouch |
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55d7876
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Better to start off with the glad hand than a middle finger.
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Blake Crouch |
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249d452
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I was aware of the self-deception, but man will do anything to live with himself.
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Blake Crouch |
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4cf642d
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You in one piece?" he asked. His pack lay open in the snow and he was cinching the last strap of a crampon onto his boot."
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Blake Crouch |
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2bdccdb
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Children who bring their children to visit us in nursing homes. We go on about how it used to be--the extinct and glorious slowness of life and other artifacts: The pleasure of eating real food, seeded and grown out of ground proximate to your own doorstep. Decency. Community. Respect for the old traditions. We tell all who will.
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Blake Crouch |
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c234331
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No wallet. No money clip. No ID. No keys. No phone. Just a small Swiss Army knife in one of the inner pockets.
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Blake Crouch |
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8bc3d0b
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She was broken and lonely, and beyond everything else, she missed her husband so much that even the uncertain possibility of a life with him--with their family reunited--might be worth signing everything else away.
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Blake Crouch |
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fe00251
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It's twenty-seven miles back to Silverton, and the pack train has been on the trail since before first light. The burros need rest. Having driven mules the last sixteen hours, he needs it, too, though the prospect of spending the night in Abandon, in this awful silence, unnerves him. As he slips a boot into the stirrup, ready to take the burros down to the stables, he notices something beyond the cribs at the south end of town. He urges Geo..
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Blake Crouch |
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ab2a3cb
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He drops his head, tries to allay the thumping of his heart in the thin air. When he looks up again, the young girl is still there, perhaps six or seven, apparition-pale and just ten feet away, with locomotive-black curls and coal eyes to match--so dark and with such scant delineation.
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Blake Crouch |
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9514c89
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Oh, is that your argument? It isn't cheating if it's another version of me?" "I mean, it's original at least." This makes her laugh. That it makes her laugh says everything about why I love her."
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Blake Crouch |
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8788840
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You ungrateful fucks! You'd all have died two thousand years ago if it wasn't for me. I created a paradise for you. Heaven on earth. I'm your God! And you have the audacity to kick God out of heaven!" "I think you got your scripture wrong," Ethan said. "God didn't get exiled. It was the other guy."
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Blake Crouch |
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9a70382
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Held it up to the peephole, Theresa felt something break inside her. It was a photo of Ethan lying on a steel operating table, naked under clinical blue light.
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Blake Crouch |
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1a5a32b
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Have five seconds before we open fire." Jack opened his door and stepped out into the highway."
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Blake Crouch |
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c9674b6
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She takes another step back, reaches into her gray woolen cloak. The single-action army revolver is a heavy sidearm, and it sags comically in the child's hand, so she holds it like a rifle. Brady is too surprised to do a thing but watch as she struggles
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Blake Crouch |
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f39e33b
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He removes a glove, touches the ham--cold and hard as ore. A pot sits there, the beans frozen in their broth. The cake feels more like pumice than sponge, and two jagged glass stems still stand upright, the wine having frozen and shattered the crystal cups.
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Blake Crouch |
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ade2411
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I don't want you to, but I need you to.
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Blake Crouch |