The Boys

(Paperback)

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"...grab yourself a drink, a stiff one, make it a double, settle into your easy chair, open The Boys, and begin. Youre home for the evening. And I promise you this, Lucas and Lowell will haunt your dreams." John Dufresne, author of I Dont Like Where This Is Going

Darling Jean Bramlett has been accepted into the college of her dreams. In the first thrilling days of her freshman year, she works hard in her classes and dreams of becoming a famous poet and a scholar. Then she meets two upperclassmen, Lucas and Lowell. Brilliant, handsome, confident, they seem to be everything she wants to be. They pull her into their orbit, and with them she embarks on a series of increasingly bizarre and violent adventures, ultimately resulting in murder.

Reviews

"At first, you'll think, wow, these three friends are a bit out of control, aren't they And then you'll think this is really scary, so you'll catch your breath, but then bad gets worse. Still, you can't put the book down. There are mysteries here to be solved. John Hughes handles this page-turning tale of depravity, mayhem, and evil with sensitivity and mettle. He an enchanter, casting his spell with fresh and provocative language, hypnotic sentences, and irresistible characters. So grab yourself a drink, a stiff one, make it a double, settle into your easy chair, open The Boys, and begin. You're home for the evening. And I promise you this, Lucas and Lowell will haunt your dreams." --John Dufresne, author of I Don't Like Where This Is Going

"It is what remains undefined that speaks most definitively in this startling journey about friendship. As three outsiders wander one into the other in a conservative college classroom, relationships, secrets, and desires rearrange across a landscape that becomes devoid of borders or mirrors. It's a place where accountability exists only in mutual dark stirrings and a teethed and restless intellect. Inside dorm rooms, honkytonks, and the muddy rivers of rural Arkansas, the dialogue is so bitingly substantive that even peripheral characters and the mundane have measure. Meanwhile, angling head-long at full volume down country roads is the momentum of a dark reckoning. An excellent read that defies labels and expectations." --Laura Sobbott Ross, author of To the Patron Saint of Wayward Daughters

"A freshman girl at a small Arkansas college forms a unique bond with a pair of bright, mesmerizing, inseparable boys. As her feelings deepen, she senses something unsettling about their three-way relationship and the mysterious events on campus. Hughes has crafted a richly Southern thriller with a plot that unfolds so lyrically, so naturally, that you feel like you're riding shotgun on a dark country road. The Boys reminded me of one of those classic thrillers like Diabolique or Vertigo, with a set of well-drawn characters and a story that just keeps moving forward, where you know something's wrong but you're not sure why it's getting under your skin until it hits you like ice-cold river water. I read the last hundred pages in one night; I had to know what happens." --Jude Atwood, Maybe There Are Witches

"One of the marvels of this strange and off-kilter novel, where at one point 'every light is halo ringed and every line gone non-Euclidian, ' is how beauty shines in the midst of darkness and violence. In a freshman university experience like none other, Darling's enmeshment in the perverse escapades of two new male friends deepens in every scene. She becomes so gripped by the need to belong with these particular boys, that boundaries of self and violation blur. In this Blakeian examination of innocence and guilt, Darling may be "unraveling the braids of starlight and love" but, the novel asks, what does love, anyway, have to do with desire Readers are left to wonder how Darling will find a place in the world now that she has realized a kinship with darkness." --Darlin' Neal, Rattlesnakes & The Moon

Author Bio

John Calvin Hughes holds a master's degree in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Mississippi and a PhD in English from the University of South Florida. For thirty years, he taught writing, literature, humanities, and philosophy at Valencia College. He has published three other novels, Twilight of the Lesser Gods, Killing Rush, and The Lost Gospel of Darnell Rabren. Currently, he lives in the dank environs of central Florida because Mississippi just wasn't hot and humid enough. Check out all his books at johncalvinhughes.com.