Manuel Roig-Franzia, The Washington Post Beneath the eerie gauze of this book, I felt an undercurrent of humanity and hope.” “A stellar encore after the success of debut novel, Wolf in White Van. A page-tuning homage to In Cold Blood and The Ring.' 'This chilling literary thriller follows a video store clerk as he deciphers a macabre mystery through clues scattered among the tapes his customers rent. more sensitive than one would expect from a more traditional tale of dread.” beyond worthwhile it's a major work by an author who is quickly becoming one of the brightest stars in American fiction.' ' Brilliant…Darnielle is a master at building suspense, and his writing is propulsive and urgent it's nearly impossible to stop reading. As Jeremy and those around him are absorbed into tapes, they become part of another story-one that unfolds years into the past and years into the future, part of an impossible search for something someone once lost that they would do anything to regain. In Universal Harvester, the once-placid Iowa fields and farmhouses become sinister, imbued with loss and instability and foreboding. Two days later, another customer returns another tape, and registers the same odd complaint: “There’s another movie on this tape.” “There’s something on it,” she says as she leaves the store, though she doesn’t elaborate. But when a local school teacher comes in to return her copy of Targets-an old movie, starring Boris Karloff-the transaction jolts Jeremy out of his routine. The job is good enough for Jeremy, quiet and predictable, and it gets him out of the house, where he lives with his dad and where they both try to avoid missing Mom, who died six years ago in a carwreck. It’s the late ’90s, and you can find Jeremy Heldt at the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa-a small town in the center of the state. “The most unsettling book I’ve read since House of Leaves.” more sensitive than one would expect from a more traditional tale of dread.” -Joe Hill, New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

beyond worthwhile it’s a major work by an author who is quickly becoming one of the brightest stars in American fiction. Darnielle is a master at building suspense, and his writing is propulsive and urgent it’s nearly impossible to stop reading. 'A moving, beautifully etched picture of America’s lost and profoundly lonely.' -Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day and winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature So begins Universal Harvester, t he haunting and masterfully unsettling new novel from John Darnielle, author of the New York Times Bestseller and National Book Award Nominee Wolf in White Van.Ī Finalist for the Locus Award (Best Horror Novel)

Life in a small town takes a dark turn when mysterious footage begins appearing on VHS cassettes at the local Video Hut.

Universal harvester movie