The Hellbound Heart [Paperback]

Praise for Clive Barker:

'Passionate and ingenious… A ride with remarkable views'
Times Literary Supplement

'A powerful and fascinating writer with a brilliant imagination… Clive Barker is an outstanding storyteller'
J G Ballard

'Barker's fecundity of invention is beyond praise. In a world of hard-bitten horror and originality, Clive Barker dislocates your mind'
Mail on Sunday

'Barker is much more than genre writer'
New York Times Book Review

Open the doorway to ultimate pleasure...

Clive Barker is widely acknowledged as the master of nerve-shattering horror. The Hellbound Heart is one of his best, one of the most dead-frightening stories you are likely to ever read, a story of the human heart and all the great terrors and ecstasies within. It was also the book behind the cult horror film, Hellraiser.

In a quiet house on a quiet street Frank and Julia are having an affair. Not your ordinary affair. For Frank it began with his own insatiable sexual appetite, a mysterious lacquered box- and then an unhinged voyage through a netherworld of imaginable pleasures and unimaginable horror… Now Frank- or what is left of Frank -waits in an empty room. All he wants is to live as he was before. All julia can do is bring him her unfulfilled passions…and a little flesh and blood…

Open the doorway to ultimate pleasure...

At last Frank had solved the puzzle of Lemarchand's lacquered box. He now stood on the threshold of a new world of heightened sensation.

In moments the Cenobites - who had dedicated an eternity to the pursuit of sensuality - would come and reveal dark secrets that would transform him forever.

But with the exquisite pleasure would also come plain beyond imagining. To escape his hideous tormentors and return to this world, Frank will need the help of his brother's wife, Julia, the woman who loved him. But most of all he would need blood.

Clive Barker was born in Liverpool in 1952. His earlier books include The Books of Blood, Cabal, and The Hellbound Heart. In addition to his work as a novelist and playwright, he also illustrates, writes, directs and produces for stage and screen. His films include Hellraiser, Hellbound, Nightbreed and Candyman. Clive lives in Beverly Hills, California