The Infinite

by Douglas Clegg

Book Overview

Harrow is haunted, they say. The mansion is a place of tragedy and nightmares, evil and insanity. First it was a madman's fortress; then it became a school. Now it lies empty. But an obsessed woman... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0843950552
• ISBN13: 9780843950557
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Leisure Books
• Length: 377 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 4.4" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

UnCannY

This book is incredible. 377 pages. Smooth Introduction of the characters and their stories which made them the people they live like today. Once they enter Harrow, everything changes. A true page turner, it will make you try to guess what will happen next and what the characters may or may not do.Psychometry.....Opening doors and facing truths. Keep it coming Clegg

Powerful

This is the second Douglas Clegg book that I've read. I first tried the author with Mischief (the second book in the series that culminates with The Infinite) and felt somewhat disappointed, especially after having heard so many great things about him. But all the notions I had were changed after reading The Infinite, a powerful and very haunting book set in a 'haunted' mansion of sorts. The story is more about its characters than it is about the situations they are placed in. It's great to see a horror book that tries to rely more on its characters and their problems and then draw the horror out of these problems.A group of six meet in an old mansion which has been revamped by Ivy, a millionaire woman who wants to unravel the house from its many secrets. Most of the guest, save for the millionaire and Jack, a paranormal investigator, possess powers of the paranormal. One boy is a telekenesis, a woman can draw from a person's mind by touching an object they own, and a man is able to make events happen with his mind. All the characters are haunted by their powers and by their past.Of course, strange things happen as they enter the house, but these things aren't necessarily hauntings. They are different, more powerful. This house is alive, but not with ghost. It is hiding something much more powerful, much darker. And one by one, the characters will have to come fact to face with the horrors of the house as well as their very own demons. The story is great and very emotionally intense, the characters are vivid and highly believable, and the finale is just amazing and terrifying. I was very sad when I got to the last page, as I just didn't want this story to end. This is a masterpiece of horror. I cannot think of one thing I disliked about the book, nor can I think of one thing I'd want to complain about, save for the fact that I wanted more!I can't wait to read the next Douglas Clegg novel. I was impressed enough by The Infinite to go out and buy all of his other books. If they're half as good as this one was, I'm in for a great ride!

Clegg's best yet

If you're a fan of horror fiction and haven't yet discovered Bram Stoker Award winner Douglas Clegg, you've got some enjoyable reading ahead of you. Clegg's latest, The Infinite, is probably his best novel to date, and is a good place to start.A kind of riff on Shirley Jackson's classic The Haunting of Hill House, The Infinite tells the story of three psychically-gifted individuals invited by the leader of a psychic research foundation to spend a few days in a haunted mansion in the Hudson River Valley of New York state. The haunted mansion in question, Harrow, has figured in two of Clegg's earlier works, Mischief and Nightmare House. Although The Infinite picks up on story elements and characters common to those two books, it's not necessary to have read them first.What makes The Infinite such a great read is the richness of its characterization. Clegg takes his time setting up the three principles before bringing them together. Cali Nytbird, a young woman who uses her psychic abilities to help the police catch killers, Chet Dillinger, a young man who experiences his ability more as a curse than a blessing, and Frost Crane, a strange man with unhealthy compulsions who has used his ability to achieve some degree of fame all come together at Harrow like tasty ingredients in an exotic dish.Also in the mix are Jack Fleetwood, the leader of the psychic research foundation, his tempestuous sixteen-year-old daughter Miranda, and Ivy Martin, the mysterious woman funding the whole endeavor for her own personal reasons.All of the characters are well developed and fun to read. Clegg does a great job putting you inside the hearts and minds of each character, making you feel his or her pangs and desires. One of the greatest pleasures of reading is getting to experience the world from a new vantage point--if you're a man, knowing what it's like to be a woman in love, or vise versa. The Infinite really succeeds in this and also happens to be quite a scary haunted house book. If you're looking for an intelligent, character-driven horror novel, Douglas Clegg is your man, and The Infinite is the book.

Truly Harrow-ing Horror

With 'The Infinite', Douglas Clegg has published his finest and most complex work. 'The Infinite' is the third book in a loosely related series that began with 'Nightmare House' (a serialized novel sent via email) and then continued with 'Mischief' (a paperback original). In 'Nightmare House', we were introduced to Harrow, a bizarre, twisting house that hid more than it revealed. In 'Mischief', Harrow has been converted into a boarding school, and one of the students unleashes a terrifying and hidden power trapped within the house. Now, with 'The Infinite', Ivy (a woman with some secrets of her own) decides to gather a number of strangers with paranormal powers under the ruse of investigating the house and the strange hauntings that have occurred within. Nothing is as it seems in Harrow, as the reader is soon caught up in Mr. Clegg's tight and breathless prose. A number of seemingly disparate plot lines are tightly woven together, leading to an ending that is truly frightening and memorable. Do yourself a favor this Halloween, and indulge yourself in one of the finest works of horror to hit the shelves this year. 'The Infinite' is a truly terrifying work sure to delight the fans of King, Straub, Barker, and Saul.

A chill down the spine!

Shirley Jackson, Peter Straub, and now Douglas Clegg. These are the three authors that have managed to take an over used and often mistreated sub-genre in the horror field and find something fresh, exciting, and most of all, scary. It's rare when I find a ghost story that thrills and surprises me at the same time as most of these seem to only re-hash the same tired premise over and over again. Not so with Mr. Clegg's newest novel, THE INFINITE. If you're looking for a well written and scary read to keep you up nights, check this one out.