The Black Labyrinth Imprint Begins - The Walls of the Castle

LIMITED TIME OFFER: the next three customers to order the Everything-In-Stock Package or All Hardcovers Package from the DRP Book Sets page will receive one of the last three existing Specialty Oversized Cowhide-Bound Ultra-Deluxe Numbered Hardcover Tome w/ Special Edition Traycase editions of The Walls of the Castle by Tom Piccirilli!

From four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, two-time winner of the International Thriller Writers Award and finalist for the 2009 Edgar Allan Poe Award Tom Piccirilli comes an intense and visceral psychological thriller novella, the first title in the Black Labyrinth imprint illustrated by Gothic artist Santiago Caruso.

Trade paperback currently available on Amazon.

Description

In the labyrinthian maze of endless corridors, annexes, and wings of the enormous medical complex known as the Castle prowls a grief-stricken man determined to redeem himself and bring justice for those victims incapable of doing it for themselves.

During the four months that his son lay dying, ex-con Kasteel lost his job, his wife, and nearly his mind.  He became a fixture at the Castle, a phantom prowling the halls in the deep night, a shadow of his former self until he faded from sight and was forgotten altogether.  

Now, without any life to return to, he takes it upon himself to become the Castle's guardian.  He lives off the grid hiding among the hundreds of miles of twisting passages, rooms, offices, and underground parking structures.  Despair, confusion, and terror are the natural state and trade of any hospital:  Not only must the patients endure disease and infirmity, but others are victims of physical and sexual abuse from the outside world or from cruel security guards.  

 
The Castle was originally a colonial Dutch settlement: a village that grew into a town which grew into a city and at last became a hospital.  Kasteel has lost his very identity to this place, taking for himself the original Dutch name for "Castle."  Kasteel sleeps in empty operating theaters, sneaks food from the cafeteria, hacks into computers, and is privy to both staff and patient files.  Using his skills as a burglar he tracks down the attackers, the deceivers, and the killers.  

 
In the psychiatric wing's day rooms and gardens long-suffering patient Hedgewick is Kasteel's only friend.  Hedgewick sees his father's ghost and claims to fight in a gladiatorial arena while the hospital guards bet on the winners.  Kasteel and Hedge often meet in the Fool's Tower, a ten-story high steeple once used to quarantine yellow fever victims a century ago, overlooking acres of gardens.  A place where family members go to pray for their loved ones, and the distraught often commit suicide.

 
But a new name is now whispered in the Castle: Abaddon, the ancient name for the angel of death.  A brain-damaged woman has visions and speaks only to Kasteel.  Abaddon is a killer, a man lost to the Castle like Kasteel himself, wandering the corridors searching out victims.  Even as Abaddon hunts the innocent, Kasteel hunts Abaddon, eager for a final showdown that may at last set him free.

An atmospheric yet action-packed, mature psychological thriller that is part examination into the bonds of family and part treatise on the nature of identity, THE WALLS OF THE CASTLE explores the deepest areas of what makes us who we are.   With a noir sensibility and complexity of character, the novella is a hybrid psychological thriller that's part suspense tale, part family saga, and part literate mystery.

The Walls of the Castle by Tom Piccirilli features four interior illustrations by artist Santiago Caruso.  The cover artwork will be featured as a color frontist piece in all hardcover editions:

   

Blurbs
 
"Tom Piccirilli straddles genres with the boldness of the best writers today, blending suspense and crime fiction into tight, brutal masterpieces."
–JAMES ROLLINS, New York Times bestselling author of The Judas Strain

"(A Choir of Ill Children is) A wonderfully wacked, disorienting, fully creepy book…The poetic nature of the prose and seriousness of intent carried the day in every scene." —Dean Koontz
 
"Tom Piccirilli is clearly a writer to embrace now before he becomes huge. In THE LAST KIND WORDS he takes us inside a mutated family of crooks and unleashes a stunning story that ranges far afield at times but never truly leaves home, a place where shadows grow in every corner. It's superbly told, with prose that doesn't mess about or flinch from evil and characters who are best known from a distance."–DANIEL WOODRELL
 
"You don't choose your family. And the Rand clan, a family of thieves and killers, is bad to the bone. But it's a testimony to Tom Piccirilli's stellar writing that you still care about each and every one of them. THE LAST KIND WORDS is at once a dark and brooding page-turner and a heartfelt tale about the ties that bind. Fans of Lee Child will love this hard-boiled, tough-as-nails novel."–LISA UNGER, New York Times bestselling author of FRAGILE
 
"Tom Piccirilli writes like a crazed banshee. I love his work."—KEN BRUEN
 
"Tom Piccirilli is a powerful, hard-hitting, fiercely original writer of suspense. I highly recommend him."—DAVID MORRELL, New York Times bestselling author of Creepers
 
"Blackest noir, the most minimal kind of minimalism, and at the same time deeply emotional: this is not easy to do. I loved The Cold Spot."—PETER ABRAHAMS
 
"Tom Piccirilli is at the forefront of the new breed of crime writers, welding his sense of history to a modern sensibility, creating a strong new voice."—Max Allan Collins, author of ROAD TO PERDITION
 
"Tom Piccirilli may write with the muscle of a 1950s paperback pulp master, but the mood and menace are totally modern….Wherever he's headed, count me in."—DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI
 
"If you like action-packed suspense with serious bite Tom Piccirilli is your man."
–JASON STARR
 
"A beautiful and perversely funny sort of crime novel: a hard-boiled hallucination....Headstone City gives you the distinctive shiver…all good writing—provides: the certainty that the writer's own ghosts are in it."—New York Times Book Review (Summer Reading issue)

Editions

Specialty Oversized Cowhide-Bound Ultra-Deluxe Numbered Hardcover Tome w/ Special Edition Traycase (sold out!): mint and first edition, hand numbered 1-13, 8.5''x11'', bound in black cowhide, signature page which is signed by author, artist and editor, Smyth sewn, printed with oil-based ink, includes end papers, black book ribbon with black header, premium 70lb Classic Crest paper, a special edition Black Labyrinth traycase.  Only thirteen copies will ever be produced and numbered worldwide.  Features the title novella, all four interior illustrations by Santiago Caruso, the bonus novelette Face Blindness and the exclusive essay "What I found in my Spinal Fluid This Time" by author Tom Piccirilli.  Features Santiago Caruso's cover artwork as a color frontist piece.

Premium leather-bound Deluxe Lettered Hardcover w/slipcase (sold out!): mint and first edition, hand lettered A-Z, 6''x9'', bound in black leather, signature page which is signed by both author and artist, Smyth sewn, front cover stamped with the Black Labyrinth logo, front cover stamped and spine stamped with the title and the author's name, includes end papers, black book ribbon with a black header, 60lb. natural vellum stock and a slipcase bound in leatherette.  Only twenty-six copies are ever produced and lettered worldwide.  Features the title novella, all four interior illustrations by Santiago Caruso and the bonus novelette Face Blindness.  Features Santiago Caruso's cover artwork as a color frontist piece.

200 Signed and Numbered Limited Hardcover (sold out!): mint and first edition, hand numbered 1-200, 6''x9'', bound in black leatherette, signed by the author, Smyth sewn, front cover stamped with the Black Labyrinth logo, stamped on the spine with the title and author's name, includes end papers, black book ribbon, black header, 60lb. natural vellum stock.  Only two-hundred copies are ever produced and numbered worldwide.  Features the title novella, all four interior illustrations by Santiago Caruso and the bonus novelette Face Blindness.  Features Santiago Caruso's cover artwork as a color frontist piece.

100 Signed Trade Paperback: 100 copies signed by the author, 6"x9", 12 point full color laminated cover, 60lb. natural vellum stock.  Features the title novella and all four interior illustrations by Santiago Caruso.

Unsigned Limitless Trade Paperback: 6"x9", full color cover, creme paper.  Features the title novella and all four interior illustrations by Santiago Caruso.

Ebook: available across all major ebook platforms.  Features the title novella.

About the author

Enter the Black Labyrinth imprint, a line of original psychological horror/thriller novels and novellas from some of the biggest names in horror and dark fiction. The imprint will consist of ten books all illustrated by renowned Argentinian Gothic artist Santiago Caruso.

The imprint begins with The Walls of the Castle by two-time winner of the International Thriller Writers Award and four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award Tom Piccirilli, an intense and visceral psychological thriller novella featuring the cover artwork you saw above and four interior illustrations by Santiago Caruso.

All books in the Black Labyrinth imprint will be offered in the following formats:

• Ebook
• Trade Paperback
• Signed and Limited Hardcover
• Leather-bound Deluxe Hardcover with Slipcase - Signed by Author and Artist
• Oversized 8.5x11 Ultra-Deluxe Hardcover Tome with Special Edition Tray Case - Signed by Author, Artist and Editor, Bound in Deep-Black Dyed Cowhide

Every Black Labyrinth book will feature at least four interior illustrations by Santiago Caruso.  All hardcover editions of The Walls of the Castle will feature the bonus novelette Face Blindness by author Tom Piccirilli, a noir crime story.

Santiago's artwork can be found on the The Best Horror of the Year Volume One & Two edited by Ellen Datlow, The King in the Golden Mask published by Tartarus Press, The Familair by Armstrong and Krause and countless other books and publications. He has become renowned for his darkly Gothic and brilliantly imaginative illustrations, making him the perfect visionary for the Black Labyrinth imprint.

To stay up-to-date on Black Labyrinth news, make sure to favorite the Black Labyrinth page located here: http://www.darkregions.com/blacklabyrinth

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