The Heavens Rise
“A masterful coming-of-age novel…Rice’s characters are complex and real, his dialogue pitch-perfect, and his writing intelligent and strong. He builds suspense beautifully…amid enduring philosophical questions about what it means to be human.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review))
INSIDE THE HEAVENS RISE
“Christopher Rice is a magician. This brilliant, subtly destabilizing novel inhales wickedness and corruption and exhales delight and enchantment. Rice executes his turns, reversals, and surprises with the pace and timing of a master. The Heavens Rise would not let me stop reading it–that’s how compelling it is.”
(Peter Straub, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. God)
New York Times bestselling author Christopher Rice brilliantly conjures the shadowed terrors of the Louisiana bayou—where three friends confront a deadly, ancient evil rising to the surface—in this intense and atmospheric new supernatural thriller.
It’s been a decade since the Delongpre family vanished near Bayou Rabineaux, and still no one can explain the events of that dark and sweltering night. No one except Niquette Delongpre, the sole survivor who ran away from the mangled stretch of guardrail on Highway 22 where the impossible occurred . . . and kept on running. Who left behind her best friends, Ben and Anthem, to save them from her newfound capacity for destruction . . . and who alone knows the source of her very bizarre—and very deadly—abilities: an isolated strip of swampland called Elysium.
An accomplished surgeon, Niquette’s father dreamed of transforming the dense acreage surrounded by murky waters into a palatial compound befitting the name his beloved wife gave to it, Elysium: “the final resting place for the heroic and virtuous.” Then, ten years ago, construction workers dug into a long-hidden well, one that snaked down into the deep, black waters of the Louisiana swamp and stirred something that had been there for centuries—a microscopic parasite that perverts the mind and corrupts the body.
Niquette is living proof that things done can’t be undone. Nothing can bring her parents back. And nothing can save her. But as Niquette, Ben, and Anthem uncover the truth of a devastating parasite that has the potential to alter the future of humankind, Niquette grasps the most chilling truths of all: someone else has been infected too. And unlike her, this man is not content to live in the shadows. He is intent to use his newfound powers for one reason only: revenge.
“Christopher Rice has crafted a rich and haunting world in The Heavens Rise. This story of a tormented family and the events that have led to their destruction and onward into the future is tense, tight, disturbing and made very real by a very talented author who obviously knows his way around the Big Easy. An excellent read!”
(Robert McCammon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of I Travel By Night)
“Christopher Rice never disappoints with his vivid people and places and masterful prose. He will hold you captive under his spell as his images and emotions become your own.”
(Patricia Cornwell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Bed)
“Christopher Rice has written an amazing horror novel with more twists and turns than a mountain road. You’ll think you know your destination . . . but you’ll be wrong.”
(Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dead Ever After)
