The tense atmosphere grows in a long crescendo before any resolution is possible. The townspeople quickly fall in line, and despair at finding a way out. Those who refuse to contribute each week soon find themselves, or their family members, victims of some kind of misfortune, often resulting in maiming or death. Set in a small town in New Hampshire, it concerns a newcomer, auctioneer Perly Dunsmore, who comes to the town and basically takes over everything by forcing townspeople to contribute each week to his auctions, by which he raises money for himself and for the increasing supply of town deputies he controls. It is better classified as a non-supernatural suspense story. The Auctioneer is not really a horror novel. A Valancourt Books reprint appeared in 2018, with a new introduction by Grady Hendrix and an afterword by Warren Carberg. Centipede Press published a lavish limited edition in 2010, with an introduction by Ed Gorman. The Auctioneer was also published in England, and in Dutch and Spanish translations. Her novel was briefly on the bestseller lists, and a film was planned but never came about. Five weeks later the author was dead of brain cancer. Samson's only novel, The Auctioneer (New York: Simon and Schuster), is dated 1975 but was not published until mid-January 1976. But all manner of other folk-notably new mothers-have delighted in the warmth and informativeness of the book.' Samson's husband noted that 'because it contains a story of the growing fetus, librarians classify it as sex education. It was based on the birth of her daughter. It is an account for children of what to expect with regard to a new family member. Her first book was Watching the New Baby (1974) it has photographs by Gary Gladstone. 1968), taught at a country day school in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1968-69, and worked as a manuscript editor of the journal Daedalus from 1973-75. Samson went back to school at Tufts University (M.A. They had two children, a daughter and a son.

They lived in Europe for a few years before returning to Massachusetts. She also taught in London, England, in 1965-66, and in London, on, she married Warren C. She taught further in Newton, Massachusetts (1960-63). 1959), and taught elementary school in Chicago (1959-60).

She finished school at the University of Chicago (B.A. She attended Wellesley College from 1955-57, her undergraduate years interrupted by marriage and by following her husband to Chicago. Samson, a nuclear physicist, and his wife Helen, n ée Verrall, a teacher. Joan Samson was the daughter of Edward W.

Auctioneer by Joan Samson