The Outcasts

Valley Ridge, Virginia is the kind of small town that believes itself beyond the reach of darkness-a place tucked against the Blue Ridge Mountains where people know hard winters, but not the kind of loss that leaves an empty chair at the dinner table. That illusion shatters the night eighteen-year-old star pitcher Alex Trent throws a no-hitter and vanishes.

What looks at first like a missing-person case soon reveals something far worse moving through the woods surrounding Valley Ridge. Alex...