I’m not entirely sure this wasn’t Bentley Little writing under a pen name…of course, he would have been a teenager, but you see what I’m sayin’.“We’re having an auction.” Now, pony up some stuff. All of it. I listened to this on audio and it was great. Matt Godfrey is quickly becoming one of my favorite narrators. The dude has serious skills and I have thoroughly enjoyed everything that I have listened to from him. Absolutely perfect for the story.I also need to give a shout out to Valancourt Bo...

The creepiest thing about this book is that my copy has a child's scribbling throughout it. A very unexpected (but appreciated) element to a story about a community losing its identity through lose of physical and emotional and familial possessions. Who was the Auctioneer? More troubling perhaps is: Are we not all the Auctioneer at times? I wish there were more books of this caliber written in this genre. Any suggestions?

”Just remember this,” he said in a deep voice that cut neatly through the confusion. “Whatever I’ve done, you’ve let me do.” When Perly Dunsmore moves to Harlowe, New Hampshire, with his auctioneering company and starts espousing the natural beauty of the community, he is mostly regarded as a man a few slices short of a full loaf. Most of the people in Harlowe have been on the land for many generations, and for most of the year, they exist at a sustainable level. They are poor and don’t know

4.5 stars.THE AUCTIONEER, by Joan Samson, was first issued in 1976. This new edition released by Valancourt Books in 2018 comes with an all new introduction by Grady Hendrix, as well as an afterword by the author's husband, Warren Carberg.This novel takes place in a farming community called Harlowe. In a quiet, peaceful American town where change is very slow to come, John and Mim Moore farm the land that John's family had owned for many generations. With their beautiful four-year-old daughter,

This is an excellent example of 'quiet horror'. It's a slow-burn of a story that gets under your skin, fills you with anxiety, and pulls the rug out from beneath your feet. If you like stories set in small towns where people are the real monsters, I'd definitely recommend this one.The story follows the Moore family - John and Mim, their young daughter Hildie, and John's elderly mother, known as Ma. They run a farm in the small town of Harlowe in New Hampshire. They live a hard life with minimal

A shady auctioneer named Percy Dunsmoore is terrorizing a small town named Harlowe by taking people's property selling them on his numerous auctions. Things got out of hand when he starts selling children and land. Suddenly a little town has more police than New York City per capita. John Moore seems to loose everything, even his cows are taken away from him but then the tables are turning. The book has a bit of a long winded start. Language is very rural/authentic and there's not much action go...

Valancourt Books recently brought this 70's horror classic back from obscurity, and I immediately picked it up. I had been hearing some buzz around the rerelease, and I was excited to read something that a number of people really enjoyed. Grady Hendrix, who single handedly started the vintage horror paperback revival with his excellent book Paperbacks From Hell, wrote the introduction for this edition, and I was excited for that as well. Hendrix knows and loves these classic horror stories, and

A brief bestseller when it debuted in 1975, Joan Samson’s The Auctioneer has been totally forgotten. Sites like Will Errickson’s Too Much Horror Fiction have kept its tiny flame from becoming completely extinguished, but it’s basically a literary shooting star that flared once, and was gone. Contributing to its short shelf-life, Samson wrote The Auctioneer in her 30s and died of cancer shortly after it was published. Her death is our loss. This is one of those books you stumble across with no ex...

What happens when good people do nothing?A searing hot read through and through, The Auctioneer — the author’s only release, due to dying of cancer the year after publication — barrels forward like a race car. I was hooked from page one, helpless to put it down. A stranger has come to Harlowe, a small farm town in New Hampshire. The stranger, Perly Dunsmore, has lived in forty countries and done business all over the world — he just oozes charm — and he’s chosen to move in to town: a place that

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The cool thing about this cult classic is it’s been reintroduced back into the mainstream by Valancourt Books. Originally written in 1975, it’s now in a snazzy paperback with an introduction by one of my favorite authors, Grady Hendrix. Set in Harlowe, New Hampshire in a farm community, we meet an intriguing kind of evil. Perly Dunsmore is the town’s auctioneer and recently inquired an old mansion to set up shop. The auctions are funded by the residents’ donations and are meant to benefit the co...

I don't remember where/how I heard about this book about two years ago. When I looked up Ms. Samson, and found out it was her only novel (she was writing her second, when she passed away from that frikkin cancer), I thought I'd look at my local used bookstore, and she had a copy.Her debut is a claustrophobic, slow boiling terror that's taking over a small town in New Hampshire. The effects of a charismatic stranger, with big plans for their quiet town...could happen anywhere. Great atmosphere an...

Very simple in plot yet full of atmospheric dread. I love a good small town horror and The Auctioneer did not disappoint.

I kinda wanted more??

After all the glowing reviews I read about this book and seeing a critic's comparison of this story with Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," I was somewhat disappointed because my expectations were so high.The Auctioneer starts off with a slow menace, but I thought the events in the story happened in an unbelievable time frame. And when Perly began auctioning off children, that's when it reached a ridiculous point for me. And it didn't seem plausible that the townsfolk couldn't come together sooner...

4.5/5 stars!Evil in a small town is one of my favorite horror tropes and books like this are the reason why!Harlowe, New Hampshire is a small town surrounded by small farms. It's a tightly knit community, or at least the townsfolk believe it is, until an outsider comes to town and slowly things begin to unravel. Perly Dunsmore is an auctioneer. Taking over a recently available old mansion in town, (due to the death of the previous owner), Perly sets about "improving" Harlowe by holding auctions

Look, with all due respect to Joan Samson, who tragically died of cancer within weeks of this book's publication, and who is a wonderful writer, this book is more theme than story. Here's what I mean by that:The whole premise of this story is based on the idea that a bunch of farmers with acres and acres of land they've owned for generations would allow an outsider to "smooth-talk" them into giving away a) All their earthly belongings b) All their cattle and livestock c) All their GUNS d) Their

I stumbled across on online discussion praising this book and when my local library had a copy I decided to give it a try.An interesting look at the power of persuasion, namely the control one man is able to exert on a small rural New England township. In today's current environment of instant availability of news and information it can be difficult to imagine a time when people were still fairly isolated from the outside world and even their neighbors. Things start innocently enough when a rece...

Picture me confused - why is this classified as horror? This is literary Fiction at its finest. It slowly quietly snuck into my veins. Then the ending blew me away. This is the very real story of how one single individual can change a whole town for the worse but only because they let him do it. So why did they let him do it you may ask? I see one of my GR friends starts with the quote ”Just remember this,” he said in a deep voice that cut neatly through the confusion. “Whatever I’ve done, you’v...

4.5 stars. What a find! It is, frankly, embarrassing that I had never heard of this book before I found it on Audible a few days ago. And it's truly tragic that this is Samson's only novel because I would very much like to read a dozen more. (She died young shortly after it was published.) Shame on all of us for leaving this book behind when we should be talking about it constantly. This is the only thing I have ever read that I would compare to Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," and that is quite...