Guardian

A telephone rings in the dead of night with shocking news for single mother MaryAnne Carpenter: her friends the Wilkensons are suddenly, inexplicably dead, their only child, Joey, a sad and silent adolescent and MaryAnne's godchild, abruptly orphaned. But as MaryAnne rushes with her family to the Wilkenson's ranch to embrace her young charge, disturbing questions mount. Was it an accident that killed her friends? Or murder? Now, as winter transforms the ranch into a place of blinding, dangerous storms, a series of horrific murders, killings that suggest a raging animal and defy solution by the local police, draw ever closer to MaryAnne and her young family. Alone in the howling winter whiteness, MaryAnne Carpenter must guard her children against an unseen, ever more insatiable killer-a killer who is closer than she thinks. Now MaryAnne begins to know the true meaning of terror.... Copyright 1993 by John Saul. A Fawcett Crest Book. Published by Ballantine Books.