MY BOOKS

THE TWELVE-FINGERED BOY (Carolrhoda Labs, 2013)

Fifteen-year-old fast-talking Shreve doesn’t mind juvie. He’s good at dealing contraband candy, and three meals a day is more than his drunk mother provided. In juvie, the rules never change and everyone is the same. In juvie, Shreve has life figured out.

So when he’s assigned a strangely silent and vulnerable new cellmate, Jack, Shreve takes the younger boy under his wing. But all Shreve’s plans and schemes unravel when he discovers Jack is different. For one thing, Jack has six fingers per hand. For another thing, he just might have superpowers.

Soon Jack has drawn the attention of the cellblock bullies as well as the mysterious and chilling Mr. Quincrux—who claims to be from the Department of Health and Human Services. But when Shreve feels Quincrux invade his mind and shuffle through his darkest memories, he knows Quincrux’s interest in Jack is far more sinister. Mr. Quincrux means to take Jack away. For what purposes, no one knows.

But Shreve has another plan: escape.

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“A fast-paced, ferocious nightmare of a story—gritty, magical, and surprisingly tender.” – Brenna Yovanoff, New York Times Bestselling author of The Replacement and The Space Between

“John Hornor Jacobs conjures dark magic with THE TWELVE FINGERED BOY. A powerful new voice whispering out of the dark.  A brilliant debut!”  - Jonathan Maberry, author of the acclaimed Rot and Ruin, New York Times bestselling author of The King of Plagues and Patient Zero.

 

THIS DARK EARTH (Gallery/Simon & Schuster – Summer 2012)

So you survived the zombie uprising. Now what?

The land is contaminated, electronics are defunct, the ravenous undead remain, and life has fallen into a nasty and brutish state of nature. You need: food, water, weapons.

Welcome to Bridge City in what was once Arkansas—part medieval fortress, part Western outpost, and the precarious last chance for civilization.

A ten-year-old prodigy when the world ended, Gus is now at fourteen a battle-hardened young man.  Gus designed Bridge City to protect the living few from the shamblers always at the gates. Now he’s being groomed by his physician mother, Lucy, and the gentle giant Knock-Out to become the next leader of men. But an army of slavers is on its way, and the war it wages for the city’s resources could mean the end of survival as we know it. Can Gus be humanity’s savior?  If he is, will it mean becoming a dictator, a martyr, or maybe something worse than even the zombies?

Grab a sturdy headknocker, strap on some Kevlar, and prepare to shape the future of humankind.

 

 

SOUTHERN GODS (Night Shade Books, 2011)

NOMINATED FOR THE BRAM STOKER AWARD FOR SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN A FIRST NOVEL

Recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram is working as muscle when a Memphis DJ hires him to find Ramblin’ John Hastur. The mysterious blues man’s dark, driving music–broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio station–is said to make living men insane and dead men rise.

Disturbed and enraged by the bootleg recording the DJ plays for him, Ingram follows Hastur’s trail into the strange, uncivilized backwoods of Arkansas, where he hears rumors the musician has sold his soul to the Devil.

But as Ingram closes in on Hastur and those who have crossed his path, he’ll learn there are forces much more malevolent than the Devil and reckonings more painful than Hell . . .

In a masterful debut of Lovecraftian horror and Southern gothic menace, John Hornor Jacobs reveals the fragility of free will, the dangerous power of sacrifice, and the insidious strength of blood.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound | Powell’s | Read an excerpt

 

 

THE INCORRUPTIBLES

The Roman Empire, now nearing its two thousandth year, is aggressively expanding westward into the Hardscrabble Territories of the new continent. With the regional governor, Cornelius, and his family steaming down the Big Rill River on the daemon-powered Cornelian, pious frontiersmen Shoestring and his rough-hewn partner Fisk are tasked with scouting for both wild game and native threats—no easy charge now that the fearsome vaettir, lightning-fast immortals who lay claim to the land, have begun killing settlers.

But it’s only when Shoestring and Fisk are sent after a run-away passenger that they discover that the Cornelians’ trip down the Big Rill is not merely an ill-conceived pleasure cruise but a crucial mission—the failure of which will imperil the world . . .

A sweeping reimagining of America’s founding principles as well as the American western, THE INCORRUPTIBLES is also a tender love story and a moving paean to family of all kinds.