The Thirteenth Child

The Snow Boy is a phantom to be greatly feared—when he is known to be in the area, a child is sure to vanish. Police Chief Nick Catesby is haunted by the unsolved disappearance of a young boy from his small, peaceful New Jersey town seven years before. The nightmare begins anew when a little girl goes missing, followed quickly by two teenaged boys. Nick has only one suspect, disgraced professor and town drunk Preston Howard, whose arrogance has left him with nothing more than his pride, a sea of whiskey, and his only daughter, with whom Nick is falling in love. Preston insists that he is not a suspect but a witness to a strange and terrifying boy who only appears between dusk and dawn. Nick regards the story as the rantings of an alcoholic, but sightings of the boy lead to a trail of missing and murdered children going back three centuries, Nick and Preston are plunged into a race to save the children of Wessex Township—and the woman they both love. PRAISE FOR THE THIRTEENTH CHILD "With THE THIRTEENTH CHILD, David Dean has pulled off both the creation of a new kind of monster, and a fine and unnerving novel around that creation. Gabriel, the ancient, murderous creature at the book's heart, is by turns frightening, pathetic, and genuinely otherworldly, and THE THIRTEENTH CHILD left me intrigued, moved, surprised, entertained and impressed." —Lisa Morton, four-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of TRICK OR TREAT?: A HISTORY OF HALLOWEEN “If you enjoy being scared to go to bed alone, this is your kind of read. With a well-written, well-paced, yet steadily climbing, plot, The Thirteenth Child is a terrifying journey that will make the reader crazy with intrigue that turns to fear and then crashes into sheer horror at the end. It's not the customary roller coaster ride mentioned in many reviews. Instead, it's a fast uphill trip in a police cruiser.” —Fran Rizer, SleuthSayers