The Omen Tree

Poplar looks like an ideal place to bring up a family: a calm, well-kept town where the neighbors get along and the seasons are lovely. That picture starts to crack the night young Ian Whelan spots something stirring in his backyard. Soon a person has gone missing, old lies come undone, and bodies turn up. As the town's hidden history comes to light, it becomes clear that the dark goings-on in its woods and cellars reach much further than anyone wanted to admit, and the fallout is deadly.

The novel is also a reflective look at how people face the monsters they carried from childhood. Its cast includes restless misfits and morally slippery drifters, characters who can win a reader's sympathy one moment and unsettle them the next. The tone is bleak but also swept up in adventure.