WHEN TRICK OR TREAT
BECOMES LIFE OR DEATH
From the dark imagination of bestselling novelist Daniel Kraus—co-author with Guillermo del Toro of The Shape of Water (which as a film won the Academy Award for Best Picture)—comes a Halloween crime story that’s like nothing you’ve ever read before.
At the end of Yellow Street, in a ruined junkyard of a house, an angry outcast hatches a scheme to take revenge for all the wrongs he has suffered. With the help of three alienated neighborhood kids, he plans to hide razor blades, poison, drugs, and broken glass in Halloween candy and use the deadly treats to maim or kill dozens of innocent children. But as the clock ticks closer to sundown, will one of his helpers—an innocent himself, in his own streetwise way—carry out or defeat the plan?
Told principally from the child’s point of view, in a voice as startling and unforgettable as A Clockwork Orange, Kraus’ novel is at once frightening and emotional, thought-provoking and laugh-out-loud funny. It’ll make you rethink your concepts of family and loyalty and justice—and will leave you anxiously double-checking the wrappers on your Halloween candy for the rest of your days.
One of the Best Books of 2019
LitReactor
“Remarkable…a twisted little miracle.”
Megan Abbott
“Cutting-edge horror, dark thriller, tragic coming-of-age story — they’re all here but blended in a way that’s entirely new.”
Booklist
“Whether you love or hate this nihilistic little oddity, you probably won’t forget it.”
Kirkus Reviews
“It’s easily Kraus’s most bugfuck novel, which is saying something, and it just might be his best.”
Horror Drive-in
“Kraus’s trick is in hiding a deeply emotional novel in the festive trappings of a Halloween story; the treat, of course, is the reward of reading something so gripping and, ultimately, rewarding.”
Cemetery Dance
“Evoking both Jim Carroll’s The Basketball Diaries and Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, it’s intimate and utterly engaging.”
Mystery Scene