Stoney Beck

Scraping by in classes, hanging out with his best friend Charlie, and trying to get a date with Lara Hanover, the prettiest girl in school—that was Nick Robbins’ life.Survival was the last thing on his mind.Then, a strange cloud appeared over the city. A cloud that kept growing. The darkness on the horizon consumed the light around it. And Nick’s dad, a Department of Defense energy physicist, might have something to do with it. Soon, it became clear that the world Nick knew would never be the same.Now, night is never-ending. The temperature is falling as heat leaves the world. Plants and animals are dying and people are turning into predators waiting for any small advantage. But Nick is determined not to disappear like the fading light. Desperate to glimpse a familiar face in the shadows, Nick races to find his friends—and the one clue that’s his glimmer of hope. When Jenny Robinson's father dies of Huntington's disease, she tells her mother she will never marry out of fear that she might have inherited the disease.Jenny’s mother, filled with grief over her husband’s death and guilt over secrets she never told her daughter, dies from an overdose of prescription pills. She leaves an unfinished note along with a snapshot of Jenny's biological father, a man she met in England's Lake District. This was a secret, tied to the name Charles Woodleigh, that neither Jenny nor anyone in her family could ever have suspected. Jenny leaves North Carolina and travels to Stoney Beck in the Lakes to try to solve the puzzle of her past. She takes up residence in a cottage in the grounds of the Hare and Hounds Inn, the same cottage her mother occupied when Jenny was conceived. On her first day in Stoney Beck, she meets Biddy Biggerstaff who frightens Jenny by telling her she knows who she is, why she has come, and has even seen her photograph. Biddy threatens to drive Jenny away. On a whim she asks the Hare and Hounds owner if he has ever heard of a man called Charles Woodleigh and is surprised when he tells her there is a priest in the next town with the same name. She rents a car from Andy Ferguson who owns the local garage and the next day drives to the priest's church. As she watches Father Woodleigh deliver the mass, Jenny realizes he is the same man as the one standing beside her mother in the snapshot she holds in her hand. Almost immediately Jenny feels a kinship with the priest, but at the same time is sure he has no idea of her existence.She finds work in the village corner shop, filling in for Sarah, a young woman with Down syndrome and increasing ill health. Sarah has to live with the cruel and unstable Biddy, who became her legal guardian when her adoptive parents were killed. It isn't until the doctor who delivered Jenny returns home to Stoney Beck and tells Jenny she is Sarah's fraternal twin sister, that Biddy's attempts to frighten her make sense. Biddy stands to share in Sarah’s large inheritance, but her plans for Sarah are to send her to an institution and take everything.Jenny decides to fight for Sarah’s future welfare and for the developing relationship with her biological father. There’s also Andy, the man with whom she is falling in love. Jenny’s unraveling of the family’s mystery leads to violence that upends the formerly tranquil village of Stoney Beck. For an author bio, photo and a sample read visit www.bosonbooks.com. Scraping by in classes, hanging out with his best friend Charlie, and trying to get a date with Lara Hanover, the prettiest girl in schoolthat was Nick Robbins life. Survival was the last thing on his mind. Then, a strange cloud appeared over the city. A cloud that kept growing. The darkness on the horizon consumed the light around it. And Nicks dad, a Department of Defense energy physicist, might have something to do with it. Soon, it became clear that the world Nick knew would never be the same. Now, night is never-ending. The temperature is falling as heat leaves the world. Plants and animals are dying and people are turning into predators waiting for any small advantage. But Nick is determined not to disappear like the fading light. Desperate to glimpse a familiar face in the shadows, Nick races to find his friendsand the one clue thats his glimmer of hope. This book is the story, intimate and moving in the telling, of a group of Lativan men who refer to themselves as the Diggers. This platoon of digger colleagues gathers from disparate fields and disciplines. Digging in the old trenches and sunken bunkers of the Latvian forest, you may find, among others, the Communicator, the Classicist, the Forest Man, Little Spirit, and the venerable Legend. Their abiding interest is in discovering and preserving what happened in the Latvian forest during the two major wars of this century. As they uncover the large number of men left dead in their last defensive fortifications, the Diggers often think that their work is perhaps the only semblance of victory to have occured in that place When Jenny Robinson's father dies of Huntington's disease, she tells her mother she will never marry out of fear that she might have inherited the disease. Jenny's mother, filled with grief over her husband's death and guilt over secrets she never told her daughter, dies from an overdose of prescription pills. She leaves an unfinished note along with a snapshot of Jenny's biological father, a man she met in England's Lake District. This was a secret, tied to the name Charles Woodleigh, that neither Jenny nor anyone in her family could ever have suspected. Jenny leaves North Carolina and travel Scraping by in classes, hanging out with his best friend Charlie, and trying to get a date with Lara Hanover--that was Nick Robbins's life. Survival was the last thing on his mind, but then a strange cloud appears over the city, blocking out the sun and casting the entire world in darkness. Title from PDF title page (viewed on Oct. 6, 2008).