The mailman

Summer arrives in a quiet American town on its first day, and a schoolteacher, his wife, and their small son, Billy, settle into the season's easy routines. Then a single small mishap throws off the household, and the comfortable world they have built begins to come apart, piece by piece, until it becomes a waking nightmare.

The figure at the center of the trouble is the local mailman: tall, pale, and topped with carrot-red hair. His friendly grin seems harmless, even reassuring, yet the longer the story runs, the harder it becomes to trust the warmth behind it. Bentley Little draws the character with a patient, unsettling precision that keeps readers guessing about what lies underneath.

As the town's unease grows, its residents turn frightened and desperate, and the horror spreads well beyond one family. The novel is a contemporary horror story about ordinary people confronting something they cannot explain, and it is written for adult readers who enjoy dread that builds slowly.