Kent J Starrett

Teenage Wastelands Kent J Starrett

Across America, children are disappearing. Some simply vanish from their houses, cars and roadsides; others run away, leaving cryptic messages about a paradise valley somewhere in the deep south. Others still are gone from the dozens of ghost towns that seem to crop up more and more as time goes on; the bodies of adults and elders are accounted for, but anyone under twenty is not. On the radio, bizarre sermons begin to appear; preaching of a valley where adolescents rule and youth reigns eternal. On the walls of abandoned structures are praises to the King of this nightmarish eden; a hypnotic miracle-worker named 'Tal Raquin.' And in a map torn from a high school notebook lies the destination of all who fall under his power; a place cloaked in the Appalachian wilds... Sky Valley. Those who know of it, never speak of it aloud. Those who return from it never survive. Set against this growing, mysterious and seemingly all-powerful threat are a trio of teenagers, themselves survivors of a supernatural cataclysm that destroyed their hometown two years earlier. Put into witness protection by a shadowy organization dedicated to suppressing the truth - by lethal means if necessary - Craig, Will and Amy are now pitted against a strange, diabolical force yet again; one that threatens to upheave civilization from the ground-up, one small town at a time. In this sequel to "Jackie and Craig," Kent Starrett takes us back to the nightmare world of that novel; painting a vivid portrait of a world where madness reigns and the most nightmarish abominations occur around every corner. A world where adolescents are granted the ability to harness the power of the very weather to lay waste to entire cities, where psychic sirens lure in converts with their hypnotic songs and where children will lay down their very lives to protect their safe haven and their new, flesh-and-blood God..."Jackie and Craig" was just the beginning. Are Craig, Will and Amy strong enough to face not monsters, but other human beings? Can they do the unthinkable just to survive the dreamlike visions and visceral, wholly human horrors of Sky Valley?