Treasure Box » (Reprint)

With a raft of science fiction awards and a dedicated following, Orson Scott Card writes imaginative and compelling novels that also explore questions about morality and religion. His Ender series is the most popular; but he also offers a fresh take on the Bible in his Women of Genesis books and has authored other history-based fantasy series.

A shattering childhood tragedy left Quentin Fears devastated and unable to cope with the world and its citizens. It didn't, however, prevent him from making millions through brilliant investments. And now the enigmatic recluse has experienced the extraordinarily unexpected: love at first sight.

But a whirlwind courtship and marriage to Madeleine — beautiful, witty, and equally ill-at-ease with reality — is bringing Quentin something other than the bliss he anticipated, for now he must meet his new wife's family.

A bizarre, dysfunctional collection of extreme characters, they are guarding a secret both shocking and terrifying — as is Madeleine herself. And suddenly Quentin Fears must prevent his dream woman from unleashing an ageless malevolence intent on ruling the world.

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Card's second departure from science fiction, the genre in which he's a perennial best-seller, is, like the very successful Lost Boys (1992), essentially a ghost story and a better one than its predecessor because Card doesn't weigh it down with Mormon family values preaching. Instead, he inserts a smidgen of his religion by making his protagonist, bachelor millionaire Quentin Fears, a 34-year-old virgin. Actually, Quentin's chastity, credible and sympathetically portrayed, is rather refreshing. Card also makes it the vehicle for subtle satire of the American obsession with sex as well as the Achilles' heel whereby Quentin is bowled over when he meets the mysterious blond stunner Madeleine Cryer at a Washington, D.C., society party. Not the least of Madeleine's attractions for Quentin is her resemblance to his sister, who died when Quentin was 11 and to whom he was devoted. It turns out that Madeleine is not what she seems, or rather, is only seeming, as Quentin discovers after he meets her family in a creepy old Hudson River mansion--a haunted house, perhaps? Yes, but not merely haunted. Many readers will hear echoes of Robert Marasco's superb haunted-house thriller, "Burnt Offerings" (1973), and of Hitchcock's classic film about romantic obsession, "Vertigo", in Card's effort, which, although not as good as either, is enthrallingly entertaining, nevertheless.