The Bird Eater

With nothing but the clothes on his back - and something horrific snapping at his heels - Jack Winter fled his rural Georgia home when he was just a boy. Watching the world he knew vanish in a trucker’s rearview mirror, he thought he was leaving an unspeakable nightmare behind forever. Now, years later, the bright new future he’s built suddenly turns pitch black, as something fiendishly familiar looms dead ahead. Surviving a violent car crash seems like a miracle for Jack’s family, but Jack knows there’s nothing divine about it.

It's been forty years since Becky Sharp's mother vanished without a trace. Becky has given up all hope of finding her, until she makes a strange discovery that may hold the key to solving her mother's disappearance. Three unmarked videotapes, hidden in the wall of her childhood home. And as Becky watches the tapes, she finds herself drawn into a horrific mystery far greater than she could possibly have imagined.

Welcome to Magnolia Lane. It’s not exactly a little slice of heaven, but in the backwater town of Creekside, Kansas, it’s the best a jobless supermarket clerk like Andrew Morrison can do. After sacrificing a normal childhood, a decent education, and true love to look after his alcoholic mother, he’s finally breaking free and living his own life — but in the squalid house he’s sharing with a former childhood friend, the living isn’t exactly easy. Plus, there’s something about the chipper, all-American couple next door that’s just downright creepy. However, that doesn’t keep Drew from accepting a job as their handyman — or surrendering to the wiles of perfect housewife Harlow Ward, a woman who always gets what she wants. Drew, like a string of hapless young men before him, doesn’t realize he’s dancing with a devil — one dressed to the nines in high heels and pearls.

On the day she was abducted, Annie O’Sullivan, a 32-year-old Realtor, had three goals: sell a house, forget about a recent argument with her mother, and be on time for dinner with her ever-patient boyfriend. The open house is slow, but when her last visitor pulls up in a van as she’s about to leave, Annie thinks it just might be her lucky day after all.

Deep in the heart of Appalachia stands a crooked farmhouse miles from any road. The Morrows keep to themselves, and it's served them well so far. When girls go missing off the side of the highway, the cops don't knock on their door. Which is a good thing, seeing what's buried in the Morrows' backyard. But 19-year-old Michael Morrow isn't like the rest of his family. He doesn't take pleasure in the screams that echo through the trees.