King of Nod

Book excerpt: “Folks say evil can’t cross water,” she told the boy, “which is why islands is ripe with all kinds’a inbred nastiness.” ​Sweetpatch Island, South Carolina, 1971. For young Boo Taylor it’s a land of lush salt marshes and sun-soaked beaches, rich in history and folklore—yet steeped in superstition and hiding a terrifying secret. After twenty years of self-imposed exile, Boo is summoned home to Sweetpatch upon news of his father’s strange death to face the friends and enemies of his youth, including his long-forsaken love. It seems everything he ran away from—the bigotry, the violence, the betrayal—has been buried under a modern landscape of golf courses and luxury hotels. Yet his homecoming reawakens the ancient forces that haunt the island and seek to right a centuries-old crime. Scott Fad’s Southern Gothic masterwork, King of Nod, layers time and secrets in an intricate pattern of half-truths and glimpses of redemption to unravel the island’s great mystery—and its inexorable connection to Boo’s own fate.