Annal:2000 Bram Stoker Award for First Novel

The Licking Valley Coon Hunters Club

Brian A. Hopkins

• 2000 Stoker–1st Novel winner
• 2000 Stoker–Novel nominee
• Score: 16.5

The Licking Valley Coon Hunters Club is a science-fiction, action-adventure, mystery-P.I.-suspense, humorous horror novel. Yep, it really is. You have to read it to believe it.

Those of you who haven’t read any of Hopkins’ Zolotow tales, you have quite a treat in store. Those of you who are familiar with this intrepid P.I. won’t be disappointed—this is perhaps the best one to date.

Nailed by the Heart

Simon Clark

• 2000 Stoker–1st Novel nominee
• Score: 6.5

The Stainforth family—Chris, Ruth and their young son, David—move into the ancient sea-fort in a nice little coastal town to begin a new life, to start fresh. At the time it seems like the perfect place to do it, so quiet, so secluded. But they have no way of knowing that they’ve moved into what was once a sacred site of an old religion. And that the old god is not dead—only waiting. Already the god’s dark power has begun to spread, changing and polluting all that it touches. A hideous evil pervades the small town. Soon the dead no longer stay dead. When the power awakens the rotting crew of a ship that sank decades earlier, a nightmare of bloodshed and violence begins for the Stainforths, a nightmare that can end only with the ultimate sacrifice—death.

House of Leaves: A Novel

Mark Z. Danielewski

• 2000 IHG–1st Novel nominee
• 2000 JT Black-Fiction shortlist
• 2000 Stoker–1st Novel nominee
• Score: 18.5

Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth—musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies—the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.

Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.

The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist…

Run

Douglas E. Winter

• 2001 Anthony-1st Novel nominee
• 2000 IHG–1st Novel nominee
• 2000 Stoker–1st Novel nominee
• Score: 18.51

The buyers find us. Establish their bona fides. Then, and only then, we run.

Burdon Lane is a businessman living out the American Dream in a shiny suburb of Washington, D.C. His business card lists him as Executive VP of UniArms, Inc., a legitimate arms dealer that’s a front for a gunrunning empire. His girlfriend thinks he’s a salesman. His best friend thinks he’s a role model. His boss thinks he’s a good soldier.

This weekend’s run should be business as usual—guns for money, money for guns—moving the product north on the Iron Highway from Dirty City to Manhattan. But this weekend is going to teach Burdon something he doesn’t yet know about who he is…and isn’t. When the meet in Manhattan turns into a five-alarm fire and an all-out war on the tenth floor of a New York hotel, there is only one way out: an uneasy alliance with a hard case named Jinx and the street gang known as the U Street Crew. And once the heat is on, with a cadre of killers and every police officer and Federal agent on the eastern seaboard on their tail, Burdon gets the chilling sensation that,…