Burnt Offerings
Robert Marasco's 1973 horror novel, later adapted into the 1976 Karen Black and Bette Davis film, helped invent the modern haunted-house template that Stephen King would soon mainstream with The Shining. Ben and Marian Rolfe rent a magnificent Long Island summer estate from the eccentric Allardyce siblings at a price that should have set off every alarm in their middle-class lives. The only condition is to look after the never-seen elderly mother who lives in a sealed upstairs suite. As the season progresses the house begins to repair itself, the Rolfes' young son grows feverish, Ben turns increasingly violent toward his own family, and Marian finds herself drawn helplessly toward the closed door at the top of the stairs. Spare, unsettling, and quietly drained of hope, Burnt Offerings remains one of the bleakest haunted-house novels of its decade.
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What you might want to know about Burnt Offerings
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A Brooklyn couple rents a faded Long Island mansion for the summer at an impossibly low rate. The condition: leave a tray of food outside the locked attic each day for the elderly woman they never see.
Yes. Burnt Offerings is a 1973 haunted-house horror novel by Robert Marasco. It influenced Stephen King's The Shining and is widely considered an underrated classic of the genre.
Yes. A 1976 film adaptation directed by Dan Curtis and starring Karen Black, Oliver Reed, and Bette Davis was released. The film is faithful to the novel and is a cult favorite of 1970s horror fans.
Burnt Offerings was written by Robert Marasco, published in 1973 by Valancourt Books.
Burnt Offerings is 260 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Burnt Offerings takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
Burnt Offerings is a standalone novel by Robert Marasco, not part of a series.
Burnt Offerings is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
