Guardian Hardcover - 1993

The author of the New York Times bestsellers Darkness and Creature gives us his most mesmerizing tale of evil unleashed - as terror stalks an isolated community bordering Idaho's scenic wilderness, taking into its deadly maw an innocent family. A telephone ringing in the dead of night signals the beginning of a journey into fear as MaryAnne Carpenter, newly separated and struggling to raise her two children alone, hears the shocking news: two thousand miles away, her friends the Wilkensons are suddenly, inexplicably dead, their only child, MaryAnne's godchild, abruptly orphaned. Even as MaryAnne rushes to embrace her young charge the disturbing questions mount. Was it merely a chance - though tragic - mishap that took these lives? Or was it murder? Soon, MaryAnne will begin to suspect an even more sinister force at work. For Joey Wilkenson, a sad and silent adolescent, seems to harbor secrets beyond her most nightmarish imaginings. Soon, as early winter closes in on the majestic, lonely spot where the Wilkensons have built their beautiful ranch, transforming the mountain landscape into a forbidding place of blinding storms and dangerous darkness, Joey's sly secretiveness, his volatile temper, begin to turn MaryAnne's tender feelings to icy fear. And soon, as a series of horrific murders draws ever closer to her young family - killings that suggest some raging animal, or worse, and defy solution by a desperate police force - MaryAnne begins to know the true meaning of terror. In Guardian, the forces of nature and the forces of evil combine chillingly in a complexly woven novel of psychological suspense, as a peaceful haven becomes a prison where, alone in the howling winter whiteness, MaryAnne Carpenter must guard her children against an unseen, ever more insatiable killer - a killer who is closer than she thinks....