Part of Series
Fifteen-year-old fast-talking Shreve doesn’t mind juvie. He’s good at dealing contraband candy, and three meals a day is more than his drunk mother provided. In juvie, the rules never change and everyone is the same. In juvie, Shreve has life figured out. So when he’s assigned a strangely silent and vulnerable new cellmate, Jack, Shreve takes the younger boy under his wing. But all Shreve’s plans and schemes unravel when he discovers Jack is different. For one thing, Jack has six fingers per hand. For another thing, he just might have superpowers. Soon Jack has drawn the attention of the cellblock bullies as well as the mysterious and chilling Mr. Quincrux—who claims to be from the Department of Health and Human Services. But when Shreve feels Quincrux invade his mind and shuffle through his darkest memories, he knows Quincrux’s interest in Jack is far more sinister. Mr. Quincrux means to take Jack away. For what purposes, no one knows. But Shreve has another plan: escape.
Author
John Hornor Jacobs, is an award-winning author of genre bending adult and YA fiction and a partner and senior art director at a Little Rock, Arkansas advertising agency, Cranford Co. His first novel, Southern Gods, was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Excellence in a First Novel and won the Darrel Award. The Onion AV said of the book, “A sumptuous Southern Gothic thriller steeped in the distinct American mythologies of Cthulhu and the blues . . . Southern Gods beautifully probes the eerie, horror-infested underbelly of the South.”His second novel, This Dark Earth, Brian Keene described as “…quite simply, the best zombie novel I’ve read in years” and was published by Simon & Schuster’s Gallery imprint. Jacobs’s acclaimed series of novels for young adults beginning with The Twelve-Fingered Boy, continuing with The Shibboleth, and ending with The Conformity has been hailed by Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing as “amazing” and “mesmerizing.”Jacobs’s first fantasy novel, The Incorruptibles, was nominated for the Morningstar and Gemmell Awards in the UK. Pat Rothfuss has said of this book, “One part ancient Rome, two parts wild west, one part Faust. A pinch of Tolkien, of Lovecraft, of Dante. This is strange alchemy, a recipe I’ve never seen before. I wish more books were as fresh and brave as this.”His fiction has appeared in Playboy Magazine, Cemetery Dance, Apex Magazine and his essay have been featured on CBS Weekly and Huffington Post.Books:Southern Gods – (Night Shade Books, 2011) This Dark Earth – (Simon & Schuster, 2012) The Twelve-Fingered Boy – (Lerner, 2013) The Shibboleth – (Lerner, 2013) The Conformity – (Lerner, 2014) The Incorruptibles – (Hachette/Gollancz, 2014) Foreign Devils – (Hachette/Gollancz, 2015) Infernal Machines – (Hachette/Gollancz, 2017) The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky – (HarperCollins / Harper Voyager, October 2018) A Lush and Seething Hell – (HarperCollins / Harper Voyager, October 2019) Murder Ballads and Other Horrific Tales – (JournalStone, 2020)
