Usher’s Passing

Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s classic story “Fall of the House of Usher,” Robert R. McCammon makes a dazzling leap of imagination in this enormously entertaining and truly frightening novel. Usher’s Passing asks what if the Usher story hadn’t ended with the deaths of Roderick and Madeline over a century ago? What if they’d had a brother to carry the family name—and infamous legacy—into the future?

Set in North Carolina in the present, Usher’s Passing begins weaving its spell with the arrival of Rix Usher at the deathbed of his father. The powerful patriarch must hand over the family scepter to one of his three children. An antiwar activist, Rix wants no part of the $10 billion Usher Armaments business. His sister’s drug habit and brother’s gambling and drinking hardly recommend either for a position of such extraordinary wealth and influence. But whoever is chosen stands to inherit not only the lucrative business of destruction…not only the vast, opulent estate that legend says is haunted by nightmarish creatures…but all the horrifying secrets of the Usher family’s mad heritage.

In Usher’s Passing, each of five generations has a tale to tell, and their stories move across time to lead Rix Usher into the haunted heart of Usherland, where he must face both who he is—and what he is.