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The Dead Boys

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The Dead Boys
By Royce Buckingham
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2010. 208 pages. Fiction.

Well written, creepy, suspenseful book about a 12 year old kid named Teddy, who moves with his mother to a small town in Washington. Teddy senses that there is something strange about the huge sycamore tree growing next door in the yard of an abandoned house. Things get even stranger when the boys Teddy meets keep disappearing, and the town itself starts shifting backward and then forward in time and no one seems to notice. It turns out that years ago, radioactive waste from the nuclear power plant nearby was dumped in the river that nourished the sycamore tree. The tree now feeds on boys, not killing them, but keeping them trapped in a type of limbo. The sycamore now intends to make Teddy its next victim. Can he save himself? And what about the poor boys already ensnared?

Warning: This book is not for the faint in heart--it is fairly macabre and tense.
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