Providence

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. (June)