Author Sarah Crowe left Atlanta for a rented house in rural Rhode Island. Her girlfriend, with whom she had a tumultuous relationship, had recently committed suicide, and Sarah herself had developed epilepsy. Behind on her current novel, Sarah believed a change of scenery might help unblock the creative process. Unfortunately for Sarah, the house into which she moved has a long and sinister history which she learns about when she discovers the unfinished manuscript of the house’s last inhabitant, a professor and folklorist named Charles Harvey who was researching the paranormal history of the area.

Specifically, Harvey was focusing his attention on a gigantic, 300-year-old red oak on the property that has been rumored to be the haunt of demons since well before white settlers built permanent homesteads in the area. Sightings of giant wolf-like creatures have been reported on the property, and most of the former inhabitants of the house have had brushes with psychosis, if not outright mass murder—including, it seems, Harvey himself.

When another tenant, a painter named Constance, moves into the house’s attic and begins showing her own signs of obsession with the tree and its history, Sarah’s own obsession with both the ghosts of her past and with the ghosts of the house’s past begin to spiral out of control.

A dark fantasy touched with references to Lovecraft, Poe, and other writers of New England weird and horror, “The Red Tree” is complex and satisfying. Kiernan’s writing style has clearly matured since her earlier works, and should appeal to fans of Neil Gaiman, Poppy Z. Brite, and even HP Lovecraft himself. ( )

Psychological terror - great atmosphere ( )