Boy's Life

Author: Robert R. McCammon

First line: I want to tell you some important things before we start our journey.

Why you should read this book: It's 1964, and Cory Mackenson's small southern hometown is full of magic: the dark, frightening magic of a monster that comes up out of the river; the bright sparkling magic of used typewriters and brand new bicycles; the in-between magic of well-intentioned ghosts who haunt the places they haunted in life. Cory and his father witness the corpse of a murdered man disappear into a dark lake, and Cory's journey begins, a whirlwind sojourn through the wrath of nature, the deadly plots of racists and moonshiners, the brutality of the schoolyard, the thrills of childhood, the specter of death, and always, humming at the edge of everything, Cory's quest to learn the identity of the corpse and the identity of the murderer. A colorful cast of characters and a non-stop sense of wonder and excitement propel this gem of storytelling, which inhabits the scary and amazing territory that lies between Stephen King and Ray Bradbury.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You don't hold with any of that pagan claptrap and you'd let a river monster eat your firstborn before you fed it steak.