Maxima Library

Ever come across a situation that simply wasn’t right—where someone was getting the dirty end of the stick and you wished you could make things right but didn’t know how? Fourteen-year-old Jack knows how. Or rather he’s learning how. He’s discovering that he has a knack for fixing things. Not bikes or toys or appliances—situations….

 It all starts when Jack and his best friends, Weezy and Eddie, discover a rotting corpse—the victim of ritual murder—in the fabled New Jersey Pine Barrens. Beside the body is an ancient artifact carved with strange designs. What is its secret? What is the secret of the corpse? What other mysteries hide in the dark, timeless Pine Barrens? And who doesn’t want them revealed?

 Jack’s town, the surrounding Barrens, his friends, even Jack himself…they all have…Secret Histories.

When his five-year-old neighbor goes missing, Jack can’t help feeling responsible. He should have taken Cody home when he found him riding his bicycle near the Pine Barrens. Then a lost man wanders out of the woods after being chased all night by...something.

 Jack knows, better than anyone, that the Barrens are dangerous—a true wilderness filled with people, creatures, and objects lost from sight and memory. Like the ancient, fifteen-foot-tall stone pyramid he, Weezy, and Eddie discover.

 Jack thinks it might have been a cage of some sort, but for what kind of animal, he can’t say. Eddie jokes that it could have been used for the Jersey Devil. Jack doesn’t believe in that old folk tale, but something is roaming the Pines. Could it have Cody? And what about the strange circus that set up outside town? Could they be involved? So many possibilities, so little time...