Passenger

Although 16-year-old Jack and his friends survived their visit to the hellish alternate world of Marbury in Smith’s superb The Marbury Lens, the boys were both badly scarred by the experience and strangely addicted to it. Trying to destroy the lens, they instead discover that there are an infinite number of such universes, each more horrific than the last. In order to expiate the crippling guilt Jack feels over bringing his friends to Marbury, he must find a way to keep them alive and bring everyone home. Smith is a brilliant, almost hallucinatory stylist, who frequently uses his talent to gruesome effect: “The bandages and tape... soaked through with blood and pus that separated like light in a prism as the fluids migrated through the gauze and formed layers of color—the broken-down spectrum of the stuff inside of Jack.” And after all the torment Jack suffers, Smith pulls out an ending that, while perhaps not “happy” (this is Marbury, after all), feels both right and true. Readers who were riveted by The Marbury Lens will flock to this story. Ages 14–up. Agent: Laura Rennert, Andrea Brown Literary Agency. (Oct.)