The series is named for the quiet Maine beach town of Dead River which is inhabited by a family of savage cannibals.
The second two books were adapted into films.
Novels
- Off Season (1980; an unexpurgated edition was released in 1999)
- Offspring (1991)
- The Woman (2010, co-written with Lucky McKee)
Short stories/novellas
- Winter Child (1998)
- Cow (2012, co-written with Lucky McKee)
- Endgame (2015)
Films
- Offspring (2009)
- The Woman (2011)
- Darlin' (2019)
Note: Darlin' is an original story from Pollyanna McIntosh and not based on any prior source material.
The series provides examples of:
- The Atoner: Peters in Offspring serves as this, hoping to redeem himself for his accidental killing of Nick in the previous novel.
- Bowdlerize: Famously done with Off Season as the publisher made Ketchum remove most of the gore and give it a happier ending. An uncut version was released almost twenty years later.
- Child by Rape: The cannibal clan keeps an unlucky man known as the 'cow' who is kept alive and used (against their will) to produce offspring.
- Creator Cameo: Ketchum has a cameo in the film adaptation for Offspring.
- Enfant Terrible: Many of the cannibals present in the series are still children.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Both Offspring and The Woman depict 'civilized' human characters as being more monstrous and depraved than the cannibals who are just following their own nature.
- Iconic Sequel Character: The Woman first appears in the sequel Offspring and becomes the central figure of the franchise in later installments.
- I'm a Humanitarian: A given in a series featuring cannibals.
- Killed Off for Real: Ketchum's final story "Endgame" has the Woman and the rest of her clan definitively killed off, albeit with the implication there may be living offspring still out there.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The first edition of Off Season leaves unresolved the fate of the clan leader's penis after Marjie bites it off. The mystery is resolved in the unexpurgated edition: she spits it out. In an afterword, Ketchum expresses amusement that the original publishers presumably found the prospect of her having swallowed it to be less disturbing.
