Bill Sheehan

At the Foot of the Story Tree

Bill Sheehan

• 2000 IHG–Nonfiction winner
• 2000 Stoker–Nonfiction nominee
• Score: 16.5

At the Foot of the Story Tree (a title which should be familiar to readers of Shadowland) is an old-fashioned work of criticism that takes a hard—and hopefully thorough—look at the entire body of Peter Straub’s fiction, from his relatively obscure mainstream novel, Marriages, through his ambitious new supernatural thriller, Mr. X, and from the shorter fiction collected in Houses Without Doors through such recent, still uncollected stories as the Stoker Award-winning “Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff.” Book by book, story by story, I have…