(click cover for larger image and back cover)

On Appalachian stereotypes:
Moonshiners and the "Deliverance" Banjo Boy

Scots-Irish in Appalachia

"Hick Hunt" Riles Appalachian Advocates

WHAT THEY"RE SAYING:

"Nicholson has constructed a small wonder...a story with the outlines of a B-Movie narrative, but with complex, sympathetic characters (the reader can even sympathize with the alien!) and an emotionally satisfying plot."-- Locus Magazine

"A very atmospheric, often creepy, sometimes weirdly humorous, and definitely well written horror novel."-- Chronicle

"Nicholson is an old-fashioned storyteller, through and through."-- Midnight Fantastique

"'The Harvest' probably holds the record for stockpiling clichés about small-town Southerners." -- Fangoria

"In a literary and a geographic sense, Scott Nicholson explores the dark legends of the southern end of the Appalachian mountain chain, a nightmare country that ends in Stephen King's yard."-- Sharyn McCrumb, author of The Ballad novels

"Scott Nicholson knows the territory. Follow him at your own risk." -- Stewart O'Nan, author of The Circus Fire and A Prayer For The Dying

"Scott Nicholson is a terrific writer. Like Stephen King, he has an eye and ear for the rhythms of rural America, and like King he knows how to summon serious scares. My advice? Buy everything he writes. This guy's the real deal."-- Bentley Little, author of The Association

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Essay "The Seeds of the Harvest"
Press Kit
Signing appearances
Reader Mailbag

THE HARVEST: Synopsis

It falls from the heavens and crashes to earth in the remote southern Appalachian Mountains.

The alien roots creep into the forest, drawn by the intoxicating cellular activity of the humus and loam. The creature feeds on the surrounding organisms, exploring, assimilating, and altering the life forms it encounters. Plants wilt from the contact, trees wither, animals become deformed monstrosities, and people . . . .

People become something both more and less than human.

A contaminated moonshine still causes the first exposure when a bootlegger touches a tendril of mildew. Then a deer hunter crosses paths with an infected drunk and the alien influence spreads. More residents of the rural town of Windshake turn up missing as sinister creatures shamble through the dark alleys and woods.

Tamara Leon is a psychology professor who sometimes sees the future, but no one acknowledges her clairvoyant gifts, especially her husband. When the strange phrase shu-shaaa enters her mind, she senses a telepathic force that threatens her family and the entire world. Her telepathy is a mental mirror: the more she allows the creature into her mind, the deeper her empathy, and the deeper its understanding of the human species.

Chester Mull, a mountain dirt farmer, is suspicious of the green glow up on the ridge, and he doesn’t take kindly to trespassers. His neighbor Herbert DeWalt is a reclusive millionaire whose spiritual search has led him nowhere. Kyle Emerland is an ambitious developer who wants to turn the mountains into a playground of ski resorts and condominiums.

The trio teams up with Tamara on a mission into the forest to face the alien in its secluded cave. Chester draws his courage from corn liquor and a twelve-gauge, DeWalt acts out of a desperate fear of failure, Emerland is driven by greed, and Tamara has no choice but to communicate with the powerful presence that has invaded their lives.

The alien doesn’t want to destroy the world. It only wants to survive. But so do the people whose metabolism has become food for an otherworldly reaper.