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WHEN TRICK OR TREAT
BECOMES LIFE OR DEATH

From the dark imagination of bestselling novelist Daniel Kraus—co-author with Guillermo del Toro of THE SHAPE OF WATER (which as a film won the Academy Award for Best Picture)—comes a Halloween crime story that’s like nothing you’ve ever read before.

At the end of Yellow Street, in a ruined junkyard of a house, an angry outcast hatches a scheme to take revenge for all the wrongs he has suffered. With the help of three alienated neighborhood kids, he plans to hide razor blades, poison, drugs, and broken glass in Halloween candy and use the deadly treats to maim or kill dozens of innocent children. But as the clock ticks closer to sundown, will one of his helpers—an innocent himself, in his own streetwise way—carry out or defeat the plan?

Told principally from the child’s point of view, in a voice as startling and unforgettable as A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, Kraus’ novel is at once frightening and emotional, thought-provoking and laugh-out-loud funny. It’ll make you rethink your concepts of family and loyalty and justice—and will leave you anxiously double-checking the wrappers on your Halloween candy for the rest of your days.

• First publication anywhere!
• Daniel Kraus is the New York Times-bestselling author of not only THE SHAPE OF WATER and TROLLHUNTERS (both co-authored with Guillermo del Toro) but also THE DEATH AND LIFE OF ZEBULON FINCH (named one of Entertainment Weekly’s Top 10 Books of the Year) and ROTTERS and SCOWLER (both winners of the Odyssey Award).
• Kraus’ next project is THE LIVING DEAD, a posthumous collaboration with legendary filmmaker George A. Romero.

"Daniel Kraus writes raw and deft and dangerous. Consider yourself warned."

— Adele Griffin, two-time National Book Award finalist

"A strongly written tale...uncompromising, dark, and true."

— Guillermo del Toro

"The sort of book every author wishes they’d written, even though they know they can’t. It’s strange, and marvelous, and funny, and dark, and I didn’t want it to end."

— V. E. Schwab

"[A] phenomenally enrapturing and reverberating work of art."

— Booklist

"Utterly riveting."

— Entertainment Weekly

"Grueling, demented, and so crammed with noxious awesomeness that I had to read it twice."

— Scott Westerfeld

"An unforgettable book...I loved it."

— R. L. Stine