Providence

March 12, 2018
One winter morning, middle schooler Jon Bronson, the hero of this engrossing supernatural thriller from Kepnes (You), disappears from his home in Nashua, N.H. Four years later, Jon awakens in a basement room, no longer a boy but a strapping young man, with no memory of his captivity. Next to him is a battered copy of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror containing a letter from high school teacher Roger Blair, who explains that he’s been in a medically induced coma and is fine, except that he now has an unspecified special power. The joy of Jon’s return home and reunion with his best and only friend, Chloe, who never stopped searching for him, is short-lived once Jon realizes that his power endangers others. He goes looking for Roger in Providence, R.I., where police detective Charles “Eggs” DeBenedictus soon becomes fixated with the sudden deaths of healthy college students and local residents. As Eggs hunts for an elusive killer and Jon seeks answers to what happened to him, each risks losing the people they love. Kepnes provides readers with a spellbinding examination of what keeps people human. Agent: Claudia Ballard, WME Entertainment.

April 15, 2018
The mysterious return of a kidnapped boy is more curse than blessing in this novel--which is equal parts love story, thriller, and horror tale.In Nashua, New Hampshire, young teen Jon Bronson is the sort of boy who loves newspapers and hamsters and takes the long way to school to avoid bullies. He also loves fellow teen and popular budding artist Chloe Sayers, though he never admits as much. Kepnes (Hidden Bodies, 2016, etc.) nails the tentative feelings that develop between kids from different middle school social strata. When Jon vanishes one morning--it's revealed early on that his kidnapper is local substitute teacher Roger Blair--the relative speed with which the town's interest wanes is nearly as devastating as his disappearance, a narrative trick Kepnes pulls off seamlessly. Four years later, a more muscular Jon emerges from the local mall with no memory of his captivity and a new obsession with the work of H.P. Lovecraft, particularly the novel The Dunwich Horror, which features a man named Wilbur Whateley, with whom Jon begins to identify. Soon after Jon's return, strange things begin happening to the people around him, from getting nosebleeds to fainting and even having a fatal heart attack. Jon disappears again, voluntarily this time, fearing that, like Wilbur, he's the monster whose mere presence causes sickness and death. Kepnes follows Jon, Chloe, and Charles "Eggs" DeBenedictus, a detective from Providence, Rhode Island, over the years as they live their separate but interconnected lives: Jon in Providence under two assumed names; Chloe in New York City as an artist who shot to fame with her initial paintings of Jon during his disappearance; and Eggs as he investigates a series of seemingly unlinked heart-attack deaths of young people. As the three come closer to one another and are repelled by either choice or circumstances, the question of sacrificing love for safety becomes painfully clear to everyone.Kepnes, whose previous novels deftly dealt with obsessive love, changes gears here and injects into this "Beauty and the Beast"-like story a deeper allegory about how far we'll go to protect the things we love the most.

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May 1, 2018
Kepnes' third genre-bending book tells the story of New England young adults Jon and Chloe, best friends in middle school despite Jon being a bullied outsider. When Jon disappears one day in the woods, Chloe falls apart. Four years pass, and with high-school graduation on the horizon, she's almost over him. Then he reappears as mysteriously as he vanished. Jon wakes up hidden in the basement of the local mall, with a note from his captor explaining that Jon had been in an induced coma but is now perfectly fine . . . except for some special powers. Turns out Jon now has the ability to give people heart attacks just from being in their presence. The story takes off from there, with a detective determined to figure out why seemingly healthy people are dropping dead, and with Jon trying to keep away from Chloe while trying to convince her he's not evil by pushing her to read a Lovecraft story that mirrors his own situation. This complicated and intriguing tale is a strange blend of Lovecraftian horror, love story, and detective novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

May 1, 2018

Jon was the oddball kid bullied by the jocks in his small New Hampshire town: there is nothing particularly special about his life, except for his friendship with Chloe. She is the only one he can trust and the only one, outside of his parents, who cares when he disappears one day on his way to school. For a while, Chloe tries to keep the faith that Jon will return. But as time goes on, so does Chloe's life. Until the day four years later when Jon is awoken in a room by himself with no memories past the moment when former teacher Roger Blair kidnapped him. The only thing he has to help him understand what's happened to him is a book by H.P. Lovecraft with a note from Roger telling him he's now stronger then he will know. Jon is eager to see Chloe, but his arrival home sparks unexpected health problems for those nearest to him. When someone dies after coming into contact with his new powers, Jon disappears once again, this time to a life of isolation in Providence, RI. There a detective named Eggs becomes determined to find the person responsible for the sudden deaths of several innocent people. Jon, Chloe, and Eggs all struggle to discover answers. VERDICT Once again, Kepnes (You) explores love and devotion on the fringes and does so to great effect in a novel with no easy answers or happy endings for anyone. [See Prepub Alert, 12/11/17.]--Jane Jorgenson, Madison P.L., WI

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2018

Escaping from the mad-scientist substitute teacher who kidnapped him, Jon discovers that he now has dangerous powers. From the author of CWA New Blood short-listed You.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 30, 2018
The three leads in Kepnes’s dark romantic thriller—Jon, the shy middle-schooler kidnapped and unwittingly transformed into a toxic superman; Chloe, the unattainable love of his life; and “Eggs” DeBenedictus, the seriously ill but relentless police detective investigating a series of suspicious deaths in Providence, R.I.—are brought to vivid life by a trio of talented performers. Reader Andrews voices Jon as a soft-spoken, bullied teenager infatuated with his only friend, Chloe. Years later, Jon returns, mysteriously changed into a powerful man whose emotions can have fatal results, and his self-disgust and frustration are obvious in every word he speaks. Actor Rankin’s performance as Chloe, Jon’s childhood friend, tracks the character’s evolution from a giddy teen to a woman in love. As Eggs, actor Michael smartly conveys the relentless sleuth’s determination to find the truth behind the series of deaths despite a debilitating illness. Kepnes’s plot may be built around Jon’s supernatural transformation, but the audiobook’s success is based on the novel’s more human elements: obsession, longing, love, and the possibility of a better tomorrow, all brilliantly conveyed by its three narrators. A Lenny hardcover.