The Punishment

by Doris Shannon

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0449245012
• ISBN13: 9780449245019
• Release Date: May 1982
• Publisher: Fawcett Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

They're alltogether ooky....! The Quiller fa-mi-ly! (snap snap)

Read this one as a teenager, grabbed it from a paperback rack at the local drugstore, lent it out, never saw it again! A neat premise for this one: A family that descends from the Bloody Beans, a rowdy, incestuous bunch that cannibalized coastal travelers centuries ago in Scotland and grew from two members to about fifty in twenty-five years time. Each time a descendant resurfaces and their activities are discovered, one of them manages to sneak away and so the story ties a "present day" family all the way back to those roguish Beans by way of using some stories of nonfictional criminal families. A young girl with a gentle personality and psychic gifts and issues brought on by both of those things, her seemingly attentive stepfather, her self-centered mother, a charismatic patriarch, his lovely daughter, a revenge-obsessed woman and her "good things come in small packages" son, a couple of in-laws, and a couple of other family members, including a six-year old in serious need of a one-way ticket to a nice, quiet place with strong locks on its doors and no keys for those locks. This book is placed firmly in the seventies, which helps greatly in keeping the story believable. The "family" seeks to keep itself going and exact a little revenge by offing a bunch of its own, but first, they wanna have a little fun with a couple of them, and what better place than an isolated island off-season, with the caretakers conveniently murdered and no means of communication with the outside world? People do (and express the wish to do) some downright nauseating stuff in this story, but it also contains some nice story lines about humanity and love. Will the family be stopped before they can put their plan into full swing? If so, HOW, and by WHOM? This one is worth a read, and if you have a foggy, creepy night to start reading the story, all the better!

The Punishment - A Story of Terror

I read The Punishment over ten years ago and to this day it still remains fresh in my mind. This book was a story about a troubled young woman who's mother takes her away from her present surroundings to a lighthouse on a small island off the coast of Maine. The lighthouse is owned by the mother's family and thus the story begins to unfold. The family is a bit strange at first but as the young girl spends time with them, they grow stranger and stranger and each one is hiding a secret. The young woman is on the edge in coping with her own problems that drove her to attempt suicide and as she learns more and more about the strange family, she begins to see things that aren't visible to other family members. There are so many twists and turns to this story you won't know the truth until the end of the book. It is a haunting, bone chilling story that will make you want to read it again and again. I myself thoroughly enjoyed the book and couldn't put it down until I was finished. Even then, it stayed fresh in my mind for years. I think other people will enjoy it as well because there is terror and surprise around every corner.