Product Description

For Step Fletcher, his pregnant wife DeAnne, and their three children, the move to tiny Steuben, North Carolina, offers new hope and a new beginning. But from the first, eight-year-old Stevie's life there is an unending parade of misery and disaster.

Cruelly ostracized at his school, Stevie retreats further and further into himself -- and into a strange computer game and a group of imaginary friends.

But there is something eerie about his loyal, invisible new playmates: each shares the name of a child who has recently vanished from the sleepy Southern town. And terror grows for Step and DeAnne as the truth slowly unfolds. For their son has found something savagely evil ... and it's coming for Stevie next.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #284299 in Books
• Published on: 1993-12-15
• Released on: 2005-01-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 544 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A withdrawn eight-year-old in a troubled family invents imaginary friends who bear the names of missing children in this absorbing thriller.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Science fiction writer Card ( Abyss , Pocket, 1989) turns to suspense with this offering. Step Fletcher, his wife DeAnne, and their children have just moved to Steuben, North Carolina, where there has been a rash of mysterious disappearances. Plagued by various problems, the religious Fletcher family slowly adjusts to the community. Eight-year-old son Stevie, however, spends all his spare time with his imaginary friends. Preoccupied with settling into their new home, Step and DeAnne fail to understand the connection between Stevie's friends and the young boys' disappearances. Almost too late, Stevie makes the ultimate sacrifice to convince his family that his imaginary friends are real and to reveal the boys' murderer. Card skillfully uses terror as a background to everyday family life. For Stephen King fans and those who like their suspense mixed with the supernatural.
- Grant A. Fredericksen, Illinois Prairie Dist. P.L., Metamora
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Orson Scott Card has won several Hugo and Nebula Awards for his works of speculative fiction, among them the Ender series and The Tales of Alvin Maker. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife and four children.

Customer Reviews

Too implausible
The story of an average family and their sensitive son had its eerie moments. The end was a major disappointment, which left me unable to tie up all the loose ends.

What Makes this Book so Good
You have the relationship of the family, despite all the things trying to erode them from the outside, teachers, church members, co-workers and bosses. There is their strong faith too that makes the family appealing even to non-believers like me.
There are lines in this book that made my eyes tear up. When I was mature enough to be moved by this book, the ending made me bawl my eyes out.

There were interesting twists and turns in the story. You'll never really expect the end. It will punch you in the gut.
This book is Orson Scott Card at is finest. Writing a powerful story with characters based on him and his own family. It's right there with Ender's Game and Seventh Son, two other fine books by Orson Scott Card.

its been a while since I read Enders Game, but this might be the best book of Cards that I have read
Over the years I have read several of Cards books. When his first stories came out I thought that I would be reading every one of them because they were so great. However, over time, I started to pick up one story after another that left me totally unsatisfied. What makes me so up-beat about Lost Boys is that it is really an adult novel that works well on several levels.

First of all, the story is very complicated. Card surrounds this premise with layer upon layer of details that you just don't ordinarily find in genre writing. This got a little long winded at times and I thought that Cards foray into Mormonism, though interesting, was way to predominant. It would have been great if he had edited it down enough so that it would have meshed nicely with the computer programing, but this is just a little bit of a nit-picking exercise on my part.

Secondly, the characters are great. They are based on himself and his family, and this really adds a level of detail that is just inspiring. I could read mundane little episodes and was just sucked into passage after passage. In a lot of ways, this story is lots of small trails that barely link together. In the end they do, like in To Kill A Mocking Bird.

Two reasons for my not giving this book five stars are that the parents a more than a little blind to some goings on of the eldest child. It was frustrating for me to see that they were not asking the right questions or any questions at all. And secondly, as I said before, at times the book slows down to the point of a stall when Card goes into just a little too much detail such as with the Mormon Church.

I think that if you like Cards work, you would really enjoy this story. Well worth picking up. Especially if you are searching for genre writing that is just a little more adult and better thought out than the usual fare.