No Doors, No Windows: A Novel

By Joe Schreiber

When madness is your inheritance, how do you escape it?

Scott Mast thought he got away–first from a family haunted by a dark fate, then from a dull career writing greeting cards in Seattle. But now he has come back to his New Hampshire hometown only to find that his family is in ruins, his nephew needs a home, and a shattering truth is clawing its way into the light.

Fifteen years ago, Scott’s mother died in a fire. And now the shadowy circumstances–the bodies buried beneath the ashes, the lives ripped apart that fateful day–are starting to be revealed. The answers unspool in the pages of a peculiar old manuscript–an unfinished ghost story written in his father’s own hand that beckons Scott out to a strange house in the woods with a lightless corridor that cannot be seen from the outside. Here Scott Mast will uncover all that has been hidden–and perhaps finish his father’s unspeakable work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9780345516886

Joe Schreiber

JOE SCHREIBER is the New York Times bestselling author of adult novels Death Troopers, Chasing the Dead, and Eat the Dark. His other novels for young people include, the critically acclaimed Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick, Perry's Killer Playlist, and Lenny Cyrus, School Virus. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and children.

Reviews for No Doors, No Windows

[stacy_chambers-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Scott Mast comes home to his New England hometown for his father's funeral and ends up staying when he strays across a horror story manuscript his father started and never finished. A failed writer himself, Scott stays in Round House, the house that the book is about, in order to finish the manuscript. But his writing awakes strange happenings in Round House (the house that apparently drove his father crazy) and now that he's off his antidepressant medication, he's wondering if he's crazy, too. Complicating matters is his five-year-old nephew, Henry, who desperately wants to come live with Scott in Seattle due to his own father (Owen) being a lush. The death of Scott and Owen's mother fifteen years prior in a fire haunts the two men and overshadows their relationship, but Scott soon learns that nothing in his life—including his brother—is what it seems.

If you like haunted house stories, this could be your thing. Schreiber lays on the pathos a little thick, but that doesn't make for any less of an engaging read, and there's nothing too gruesome. (I tend to dislike books that overdo "the grossout.") I read the book in two days—always a good sign for a book in the horror genre.

[saramllr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When I saw that this was by the guy that wrote "Star Wars: Death Troopers" I was hesitant, but I have to say that this is a pretty creepy book. There's a good ghost story, complete with a decaying old house with secret rooms. A couple of scenes gave me chills; I won't explain at the risk of being a spoiler. If you like horror fiction pick this one up.

[lehack · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I picked up the book because the author was local to central Pennsylvania. This is an old-fashioned ghost story complete with a spooky old house. The main character Scott Mast, is a writer, home for his dad's funeral. His brother, a single parent, has a young son, is unemployed and spends his days in front of the TV drinking beer. The son longs for the attention and companionship he is getting from his uncle. When the boy breaks the window in the toolshed playing baseball, they find an unfinished manuscript written by his grandfather in the toolshed. Scott decides to stay to try to finish the book when he finds the house described in the manuscript. This is a quick read but it holds the readers attention throughout.

[kmaziarz_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Back in his small New Hampshire hometown for his father’s funeral, want-to-be novelist Scott Mast discovers the unfinished manuscript of “The Black Wing,” a horror novel written by his father. Though part of Scott wants nothing more than to head back to Seattle, fleeing his alcoholic brother Owen; long-lost high school sweetheart Sonia; and a wealth of painful memories relating to his mother’s death in a cinema fire 15 years previously, another part of him feels compelled to spend some time in town, finishing his father’s novel. When Scott discovers that Round House, the house completely without angles or corners that served as the setting for his father’s book, actually exists and is sitting vacant just outside of town, he decides on impulse to rent Round House and finish the manuscript there. Meanwhile, he tries to take his young nephew Henry under his wing and away from the drunken Owen, and begins getting closer to Sonia despite their painful history. At first finding the writing stalled out, Scott begins researching a tantalizing bit of local history mentioned in the novel and begins to unearth evidence of some very disturbing goings-on involving his family that date back to the 1880s at least. As he uncovers more and more, the writing begins to flow. Despite…or perhaps because of…his unblocked creative impulses, Scott finds himself gripped tightly by what he first assumes are paranoid delusions and hallucinations…but he soon begins to believe that the situation he’s found himself in is very real indeed, and very deadly.Chilling and genuinely creepy, “No Doors, No Windows” is sure to please any horror or ghost story fan. Recommended for those who can’t wait for Joe Hill’s next novel.