The Thirteenth Child

Little Megan Guthrie has gone missing from Wessex Township, a small, peaceful New Jersey town—vanished from her schoolyard, practically from within view of her family home. And no amount of police effort has resulted in her return. Nick Catesby, Chief of Police, has no suspects, no evidence, and no time before a pair of teenagers turns up missing. When disgraced professor and town drunk Preston Howard comes forward claiming he knows the truth about who or what has been taking the children, he becomes their prime suspect. Yet Preston insists that he is not the culprit but a witness to a strange and terrifying boy who appears only between dusk and dawn—a creature that lures children from their homes for his own dark purposes. Chief Catesby discards the story as the ranting of an alcoholic, until his suspect’s lovely daughter helps him discover a trail that leads back through three centuries of disappearances and murder.