The Shadow Year cover art

The Shadow Year

A Novel

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About this listen

On New York's Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy spends much of his free time in the basement of his family's modest home, where he and his brother, Jim, have created Botch Town, a detailed cardboard replica of their community, complete with figurines representing friends and neighbors. Their little sister, Mary, smokes cigarettes, speaks in other voices, inhabits alternate personas... and, unbeknownst to her siblings, moves around the inanimate clay residents.

There is a strangeness in the air as disappearances, deaths, spectral sightings, and the arrival of a sinister man in a long white car mark this unforgettable shadow year. But strangest of all is the inescapable fact that all these troubling occurrences directly correspond to the changes little Mary has made to the miniature town in their basement.

©2008 Jeffrey Ford (P)2010 Audible, Inc
Classics Fantasy Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

Critic reviews

World Fantasy Award, Best Novel, 2009
"Surreal, unsettling, and more than a little weird. Ford has a rare gift for evoking mood with just a few well-chosen words and for creating living, breathing characters with only a few lines of dialogue. Give this one to readers who appreciate the blending of literary fiction, fantasy, and mystery." (Booklist)
"Kevin T. Collins... has an astonishing range of voices at his command. His excellent narration definitely added to my reading enjoyment and I’ll be looking for his name in the future." (Fantasy Literature)
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