Black Machetes (Short-list finalist of Eric Hoffer Award)

Pure evil collides head on with innocent hope in this edgy, addictive, and controversial novel that readers agree would make a great movie on the big screen.
Two evil psychopaths in an East Texas town torture and kill with no consequence until the one that got away finally returns to take matters into his own hands.
For Benjamin Wilder, it was just another day in the life of a twelve-year-old boy...

• Waking up with a fresh black-eye, compliments of the Rabid Dog: CHECK
• Taking care of his drunken mother before school: CHECK
• Risking life-and-limb to sneak out for a sleepover (and getting caught): CHECK
• Witnessing two psychopaths commit unspeakable acts of human horror: CHECK
• Running for his life and assuming a new identity in the process: CHECK
• Living happily ever after: YEAH, NOT EXACTLY

Black Machetes is a powerful page-turning thriller that all readers agree is both shocking and endearing, written in gritty-cinematic tones that paint a painfully intimate portrait of life framed by abuse, tragedy, and inhibited love.
Disclaimer: Author cannot be held responsible for any sleep deprivation caused by reader's inability to stop turning pages into the wee hours of the night.
Book Synopsis...

Benjamin Wilder grew up with sparse shelter, infested provisions, and constant abuse dealt to him by his stepfather: Jessup—a.k.a. the Rabid Dog. Without a sober mother to defend him from the Rabid Dog’s wrath, Ben finds reprieve and adventure in a club of misfit boys called the Black Machetes. But the world as Ben knows it comes to an end when he witnesses an act so psychologically appalling that it forces him to run for his life. He travels as far away as he can until fate steps in and guides him to a small town where he finds the help he needs to assume a new identity and live a life he could only imagine before.

Years after trying to bury the demons from his past, Ben seems to finally settle into a sense of normalcy. But his world continually gets turned upside-down by a series of discoveries, revealing that the evil from his childhood has never stopped cursing him—having over the years destroyed everyone he ever cared for. When the ticking time-bomb within Ben’s psyche finally detonates with a fumed vengeance, it pushes his wife and unborn child into the very clutches of the same malevolence that has forever haunted him. In the end, Ben must again face those demons from his past in order to save his true love, and ultimately his own sanity.

Go ahead and take the Page Turner Challenge and see how far you get into Black Machetes before you can put it down and discover a brilliant story that is a Must Read for 2016.