Vacation

By: Matthew Costello

Narrated by: Peter Macon

Jack Murphy and his family need a vacation. This one might just kill them.

After a global crisis causes crops to fail and species to disappear, something even more deadly happens. Masses around the world suddenly become predators, feeding off their own kind. These “Can Heads” grow to such a threat that fences, gated compounds, and SWAT style police protection become absolutely necessary to live.

After one attack leaves NYPD cop Jack Murphy wounded and his partner dead, Jack takes his wife and kids on a vacation far up north, to the Paterville Family Camp, a fortresslike compound in the mountains where families can still swim and take boats out on a lake.

At first, it’s idyllic. There’s plenty of food, fun stuff for their children, and another nice young couple with kids of their own. And when the camp suffers a Can Head attack, Jack even helps defend it. He’s immediately offered a job in security. His family wants to stay.

But Jack slowly comes to realize that there’s something else going on at Paterville Family Camp, and when he makes a gruesome discovery, he will be forced to get his family out, no matter who—or what—stands in his way.

©2011 Matthew J. Costello (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“I absolutely devoured Vacation…It’s dark, subversive, deeply disturbing, and absolutely compelling.” (Jonathan Maberry, Bram Stoker Award–winning author)

"Zombie Apocalypse" meet the modern H.P. Lovecraft

VACATION • by Matthew Costello • Read by Peter Macon • Zombie Apocalypse meet the modern H.P. Lovecraft • A letter to to H. P. Lovecraft explaining the “Zombie Apocalypse” Theme via a piece of mythos fan-fiction. • "Red Hook", "The Lurking Fear" and "The Picture in the House" deliciously mashed into an end-of-the-world-scenerio • H.P. Lovecraft would, without a doubt, answer telling young Matthew what an awesome talent for writing he had. Urge him he should write as often as he could. That with time and hard work, not only will he be known as the next Robert E. Howard, but he will be remembered as the one and only Matthew Costello. • First you notice the spectacular writing. Next you notice the spectacular narration. • Audible has some famous people reading some great books - called something like ‘maestro editions’. I heard Bill Nighy reading “MoonRaker” by Ian Fleming. Brilliant. • Well, all apologies to Mr. Author and Mr. Narrator, but this sounds exactly like one of those. Basically a book mixing "Red-hook" with the reversed evolution-ed creatures that live underground on lightning & thunder mountain in "The Lurking Fear" with "The Picture in the House" by the modern H.P. Lovecraft. ALL THAT read by Lawerence Fisburne. • Brilliant. • I love H.P. Lovecraft and I love Lawerence Fisburne. • I’m OLD MAN PARKER and I highly recommend this audio-book. • Love it.

Page turner

The action was outstanding I couldn't stop reading. How ever I still had questions when it ended. I hope there is a part 2

Train Wreck

I love mystery and suspence, I have a long commute to work and go through quite a few books each month and had a strong need to read something outside the murder solving norm of the genre. So I read the reviews on Vacation and thought this might be just the ticket. I have dipped my toe into the zombie genre world and liked "day by day armegeddon" and a few others. This book, "Vacation" is horrible, the dialog is comic book quality, and right from the start the author must have decided to figure out a way to use the F-bomb in every setence of dialog in every possible permutation of the word. I am no prude and in books where the scene and characters would normally use hard language I am right there with it, but this is amazing, it is the fourth word in the book and used, really, as a form of punctuation from start to finish - and on top of that it is the most sophisticated word in the book. This book is not worth a minute of your time, if you like a good story and some excitement in a book, and something close to talent in writing it you will be angry you downloaded this garbage.

Narration fits the story.

boring. narrator did his best but the material was too cliche to really get into.