Full Wolf Moon

In bestseller Childs’s scary, atmospheric fifth novel featuring Jeremy Logan, a Yale history professor and investigator of unexplained phenomena (after 2015’s The Forgotten Room), Logan looks for a rational explanation for rumors of werewolves. He has come to Cloudwater, a secluded Adirondacks retreat for creative people, to finish writing a monograph on heresy in the Middle Ages. But his plans are disrupted by a plea for help from an old college friend, forest ranger Randall Jessup. Jessup is worried by the deaths in recent months of two young, fit, highly experienced backpackers, each of whom was torn to pieces during a full moon near the small, isolated town of Pike Hollow. The official line is that the hikers were the victims of a bear, but Jessup doesn’t buy it. Logan agrees to help out and begins his inquiries in Pike Hollow, whose few stores are evocatively described as “pushed up close against the road as if grasping at a life preserver.” Fans of The X-Files will be enthralled. Agent: Eric Simonoff, William Morris Endeavor. (May)