A long, hot summer, toward the end of the century. In Alder, a tiny English village dominated by a bizarre religious community known as the Agapemone, dreams - and nightmares - are beginning to come true...Paul, a young academic composing a thesis about the end of the world, and his girlfriend Hazel, a potter, have come to Alder for the summer, to work and live together. Their idea of a rural retreat gradually sours as the laws of nature begin to break down around them.Fish sprout from trees, people undergo strange transformations, repressed feelings erupt into violence and death. Creatures from local legend, from science fiction, and from the darkness of man's mind prowl Alder. Human evil melds with the supernatural, and the village, swollen by an annual rock festival of cataclysmic proportions, prepares to reap a harvest of horror. As chaos spreads, engulfing the entire community in terror, Paul and Hazel find themselves drawn in different ways into the vortex of fear that lives inside the Agapemone.At the heart of it all is the Reverend Anthony Jago. Spiritual leader of the Agapemone, a saint or a psychic, Jago is a man who can bring about Heaven on Earth...or Hell.With this story of a religious cult and its darkly compelling leader, Kim Newman cements his status as a master of the horror/fantasy form. An expansive, densely populated novel, Jago slips a stiletto blade into the heart of a brilliant vision of horror and transcendence. Here certainly is a feast for fans of horror and dark fantasy. Read Less