I read this book with our horror group at Shelfari.

The main character, Walt, buys a fixer-upper house. He has a new job as a teacher and once the house is ready he plans to propose to his girlfriend and has already purchased her a ring. This house is Walt's first step to obtaining the life he really wants. Then he notices a small stain on his ceiling. A stain which, within a few days, starts to spread and drip down. The stain looks like blood.
And so the nightmare begins.

This story was extremely gory and brutal which I didn't mind at first because it seemed integral to the story. I did reach a point, though, where I thought the story was going a bit too far and the body count was still continuing to rise. Also, I don't feel like what happened was adequately explained-and sometimes I'm ok with that and happy to come up with my own ideas. In this case, however, I felt a bit like I was left hanging.

This was a decent read. It kept me engaged and the pacing was fast; the book went by in no time. It did have some portions that were just not believable. If you are willing to suspend pretty much all of your disbelief, this is a good read. If you can't, or if you need all the loose ends tied up, this may not be the book for you. ( )

Walt is a first-time home owner who is also about to start his first year as an English teacher. He's been putting all his money and time into renovating the very old house he bought, which needs a lot of work, but he's also waiting for the right moment to propose to his girlfriend of three years, Amanda. She co-owns the bookstore in town, which is miles away from Walt's isolated house, whose closest neighbor is on the other side of the woods.
The most worrying thing about the old house is the water stain on the ceiling that nothing gets rid of, and it keeps growing, both in size and color. When Amanda sees the stain devour a bug, she runs, while Walt's desire to clean it away turns to fascination as he realizes it's taking shape.

This book is pretty bloody. The characters who the reader would think of as safe, aren't. The writing is good, there are unexpected twists, the characters have depth, though practically everyone in the book sneers at one time or another. Lots of sneering. And there are brief conversations about Shakespeare, as Walt is teaching his class Romeo and Juliet. But it's definitely a tale for readers who can handle lots of blood and death. On a scale of scariness, one to five, I'd give it a 2.5. ( )

Bleed by Ed Kurtz is a horror story about a young, promising English teacher and what happens when he buys an old, rundown house with a dark history. I can’t resist the idea of a horror story, but find they usually go too far over the top for me, and indeed, Bleed quickly turned from intriguing and slightly scary to a full-blown gore fest with blood and viscera dripping and splashing about.

As Walt, the young English teacher and his girlfriend Amanda start to make repairs to the house, a stain is discovered. Originally they cover it up but it reappears, it starts to drip down onto the floor and it looks like blood. Eventually it grows larger and larger and then suddenly starts to move around and hunt for prey. Walt descends into madness and before too long he is helping the creature by bringing sacrifices to it. The creature develops a face, eyes and a mouth and starts to talk, mostly demanding more blood. Walt is run ragged trying to keep this creature full and satisfied.

This is the first book by Ed Kurtz and there are some obvious flaws and at various points in the story I thought he had written himself into a corner and then used extreme violence to escape. This author seemed to revel in the violence that this downward twisting book delivered. Personally this was a little too much for my taste and I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone except lovers of demented, macabre, and gore infested tales. ( )

When Walt buys a fixer-upper of a house, he notices a red stain on the ceiling that starts to turn into something else.

This was the first disappointment I've received in the Nocturnal Reader's box. While Kurtz does take this premise in unexpected directions, it's essentially a gorefest, with one-dimensional, B-movie-type characters who exist only to die in grotesque ways. So many people connected to one man disappear and no one comes to investigate--really? Also, this book could use a thorough copy edit. ( )

An idyllic country cottage purchased by a seemingly innocent high school English teacher? A cannibalistic creature that grows out of a bloody stain in this cozy cottage? Blood? Gore? Murder? Nope, it's not Stephen King or Dean Koontz...it's debut author Ed Kurtz, who, based on this well-written horror novel, has definite promise as a future horror-genre superstar if he keeps writing books like this!

The first review I read about this book mentioned how Bleed is a brilliant throwback to the horror reads/flicks of the 1970s. I definitely felt that as I read this scary,gory variation of the haunted house tale...kind of reminiscent of The Amityville Horror, Little Shop of Horrors ("Feed me Seymour"/"Waaaltttt!!"), with a unique twist of its own. The book itself was well-written, and the creepy story kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time! ( )