Burnside can make even the most mundane scene feel threatening. Oddly tender, for all the terror it evokes, his prose has a seductive depth and clarity that's impossible to resist. . . . "The Glister" is a delight--a scary, fascinating exploration of innocence and evil, and the thin margin that often separates the two--Scott Smith, author of "A Simple Plan." Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

In his bleakly beautiful seventh novel, Scottish author Burnside (The Devil's Footprint) delivers a cautionary tale illustrating that greed and an indifference to suffering are the real horrors of modern life. In recent years, five teenage boys have disappeared from the coastal village of Innertown, where an abandoned chemical plant deep in the forest is slowly poisoning its rapidly declining population. The official line is that the missing boys are seeking a better life away from the town whose "sole business is slow decay." A 15-year-old lad, who's found solace in books and foreign films that he can barely understand, is determined to find out what happened to his friends and why the town's lone cop spends so much time in those tarnished woods. Burnside expertly details an apocalyptic landscape where the "expectation of failure" is rampant. While the ending feels hurried, Burnside's flawless prose explores how defeat is only a state of mind. (Mar.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Burnside (The Devil's Footprints) sets his new novel in Innertown, an economically depressed town still reeling from the closure of the chemical plant years earlier-a chemical plant that leaked contaminants into the water and soil and caused strange mutations in animals and people. Innertown's problems don't end there, however: nearly every year, another boy disappears, never found. Policeman John Morrison discovered the first boy's body but covered it up. Now he's stuck pretending each subsequent disappearance is merely a runaway boy and not a case of murder. Meanwhile, a young boy named Leonard wonders if he might be the next victim. Burnside's story is haunting and twisted but, ultimately, incomprehensible and unresolved. He evokes a mood of an eerie otherworld and lets plot details swirl like fog around readers. Not a usual murder mystery, this is suitable (but not essential) for large public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/08.]-Laurel Bliss, San Diego State Univ. Lib. Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Since the chemical plant in Innertown shut down more than a decade ago, the isolated village that time has seemingly forgotten has become a dreary place. The once-lush Poisoned Wood is now home to struggling botanical life, at most, and dwindling hopes seem to have given way to fatalism, for its inhabitants die of things no doctor could diagnose disappointment, anger, fear, loneliness and boys disappear. Police officer John Morrison, however, knows more than he says. Bookworm Leonard, motherless since 10, envies the lucky towns farther along the peninsula ; misses his friend Liam, latest of the disappeared boys; and ultimately goes to the abandoned plant for answers. Burnside artfully mingles growing gloom and doom with commentary on the socioeconomic inequality between industrialists and those who have neither material well-being nor prospects of a better life. Strand by strand, Burnside delicately creates a texture of doubt, misgiving, fear and loneliness, of the deepening horror of everyday life on whose razor edge he delicately balances piercing insights and surreal humor.--Scott, Whitney Copyright 2009 Booklist From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.