Providence

March 12, 2018
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.

July 30, 2018
The three leads in Kepnes’s dark romantic thriller—Jon, the shy middle-schooler kidnapped and unwittingly transformed into a toxic superman; Chloe, the unattainable love of his life; and “Eggs” DeBenedictus, the seriously ill but relentless police detective investigating a series of suspicious deaths in Providence, R.I.—are brought to vivid life by a trio of talented performers. Reader Andrews voices Jon as a soft-spoken, bullied teenager infatuated with his only friend, Chloe. Years later, Jon returns, mysteriously changed into a powerful man whose emotions can have fatal results, and his self-disgust and frustration are obvious in every word he speaks. Actor Rankin’s performance as Chloe, Jon’s childhood friend, tracks the character’s evolution from a giddy teen to a woman in love. As Eggs, actor Michael smartly conveys the relentless sleuth’s determination to find the truth behind the series of deaths despite a debilitating illness. Kepnes’s plot may be built around Jon’s supernatural transformation, but the audiobook’s success is based on the novel’s more human elements: obsession, longing, love, and the possibility of a better tomorrow, all brilliantly conveyed by its three narrators. A Lenny hardcover.