Bare Hands, Numb Skulls

Book excerpt: On the brink of full-fledged adulthood, Nick James doesn't hear a barbaric roar for heroics in his head--but his friends sure do. When a severed arm is mysteriously found in the woods where they spent their summers as kids, Nick and his friends, lead by the irresistible Flint, seem determined to pull a phantom out of the realm of delusion and into the real world. Suspecting that the supposed specter they witnessed as teenagers is responsible for the severed arm, the five friends take to the wild for a camping reunion. And when a Lovecraftian cult arrives proclaiming the end of the world, Nick feels things are slipping into the surreal--exactly where Flint wants them to be. Bare Hands, Numb Skulls is a slice of pulp mythology that takes timeless motifs into off beat and unexpected directions. It explores the dynamics of pack buddy-dom and the growing pains of friendship. Nick may not share his friends' primitive lust for risk, but he may yet come to admire their willingness to rush in with the resurrected hope that monsters still lurk, that epic adventure still lives, even in the seemingly sterile woodlands of rural America.