The Hanging Garden by David Wagoner
“This is a powerful, shocking story, the full pay-off of David Wagoner’s astonishing talent.” James Dickey, author of terrifying classic Deliverance
Simon Burrows is a divorced, retired politician looking who retires to the country with his new, young girlfriend to raise show dogs. But his simple dream turns into a gruesome nightmare when he discovers that his neighbors, and the verdant, tranquil landscape around him, hide an unspeakable horror…
Books by David Wagoner
The Hanging Garden
"This is a powerful, shocking story, the full pay-off of David Wagoner's astonishing talent." James Dickey, author of terrifying classic Deliverance
Simon Burrows is a divorced, retired politician looking who retires to the country with his new, young girlfriend to raise show dogs. But his simple dream turns into a gruesome nightmare when he discovers that his neighbors, and the verdant, tranquil landscape around him, hide an unspeakable horror...
The Escape Artist
Danny Masters is a teenage magician, pick-pocket and escape artist who learned it all from his late father. All he wants to do is make it in the big city. But along the way he picks the wrong pocket, stealing a wallet full of stolen cash, and finds himself having to use all of his skills just to stay alive… while still chasing his dreams.
The Man in the Middle
The first book by acclaimed novelist and poet David Wagoner, back in print for the first time in 70 years, hailed by the Los Angeles Times as ”a breathtaking novel filled with terror and pathos.”
Middle-aged Charlie Bell, a crippled watchman at a railroad crossing, sees a woman thrown out of passing train. He takes the injured woman, and the briefcase she was clutching, with him in search of a phone. She’s a reporter, and the briefcase contains papers that could destroy a corrupt Senator. But before Charlie can get her help, a thug attacks them and kills her. Now Charlie is relentlessly pursued through the Chicago underworld by cops who think he’s a murderer…and killers intent on silencing him.
Money Money Money
“Bizarre and disturbing.” New York Times
Big, generous Willie Grier is swimming in Lake Michigan one summer night in 1955 when he finds the dead body of a man. The horrifying experience leads him into bed with a ruthlessly seductive woman, pits him against vicious gangsters, and hurls him into a whirlwind of cold cash, hot sex, and bloody violence.
Reviews For The Hanging Garden
Wagoner has combined his driving, poetic style with a twisted and haunting plot to create a brilliant novel which examines pure evil. This amazing book truly captivates the reader. Hard to put down and impossible to forget.
Unlike anything Wagoner has done before. It is his own Ethan Frome, but with starker appointments of suspense and sheer horror.
This chilling story is compellingly told, a fine novel of literary merit, not just a good read.
Evil is a powerful force. When it emerges from the pages of a book that is written in a style as straight-forward and precise as a business memo, it is devastating.
