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| King of the Nine Hells
| | Dean Klein
| It is the time of the Dark Ages. A gravedigger works in the moor late one night to assemble a grotesque book by the light of a torch. On its papyrus pages are the spells of a demon to be bound in the wood of a Sorcerer’s Tree. Completing his task, the book helps the man become the head of the most powerful – and most feared – family in a land to become known as Scotland. Fifteen hundred years later, a dishonest merchant attends a book sale held far from his place of business in London. There he sees and steals a nearly ancient tome with a title that links it directly to hell. But he has no real idea of what he has just done, that what he has taken is possessed…a book that can see and hear those around it…a book that will grant its reader anything he wants if it so chooses no matter how gluttonous or vile the request, no matter who gets hurt or who dies. Selling the book three times, it is returned three times, within just days of the sale, its terrified owners claiming supernatural occurrences were observed in their own homes. And one of those customers, a woman nearly killed by the book, happens to be the wife of an Oxford University theologian that also possesses a deep knowledge of occult beliefs and practices. But before Dr. Peter Ashford can carry out his plan to destroy the book, it goes missing. The man is thrust into a race against time to find the demonic book, encountering two antagonists..one human, one not. In his frantic effort to track it down, Peter must make sense of mysterious clues and codes, solve a baffling cryptogram, avoid the deadly cloud that never moves, escape the control of a strange man with dark green eyes that lives in a castle so haunted that local residents will not even speak of it. As Peter discovers at the risk of his own life, in this castle are flesh-eating revenants and murderous stone statues that come to life in an attempt to kill him. But from the sole human resident of this castle, he learns to his horror that within the book is a secret. And if unlocked, the most powerful archdevil of hell will be unleashed on earth...an archdevil that is not Satan. Time is running out. People begin to die, and how they die cannot be explained by any science known to man ... their deaths coming to scare even police forensic investigators. Peter is humanity's only hope for rescue. Nearly losing his life several times as he struggles to locate the book that will try to stop him at all costs, the man is drawn into hell itself as he races to prevent a satanic Armageddon.
KING OF THE NINE HELLS is one of three high-concept works of eerie fiction by this author. Hell's Shadows, a ghost story written for women and The Amulet, an epic Christian thriller, are all hugely entertaining -- spooky -- novels that cause the reader to rapidly turn the pages.
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