The Well

? An innocent desire to check out his origins leads Greg Lowell and his family into a bloody struggle for survival in Mike Sirota's tale of unrelenting suspense, The Well. Lowell is an honest, hardworking family man, harried by the pressures of his job and his life in crowded suburban Los Angeles. On a vacation to northern California, Greg decides to visit Bonner, the small town where he was born and which his family suddenly left mere months after his birth. From the first, the town gives Greg and Janet and their teenage son and daughter, Mark and Allison, an unusually warm welcome. Within days, the athletic Mark is approached by the football coach, fifteen-year-old Allison meets an attractive boy, and Greg and Janet find a beautiful, affordable house. It seems too good to be true - and it is. Sirota guides us through the town's tortured history, centered around an old well on a homestead pioneered by Greg Lowell's ancestors. As Greg will discover, the well was the site of a bloody massacre that left a curse over the entire town - a curse his return has reawakened. Expertly building the suspense, Sirota never lets the horror lapse as Lowell and his family are drawn inexorably toward the final conflict. The Well is a masterful page-turner that will keep you reading late into the night. - Henry Garfield