Skeleton Key

Status: Available

Page Count: 218

Edition: First

ISBN: 978-1-59092-353-5

SRP (USD): $14.99

Size: 5.25x7.5 trade paperback

Cover: Buster Blue

Genre(s): Young Adult

Homepage: Jess Mowry

We have rated this book Teen

(Street Violence, Drug Use,

Homelessness, Magic, Ghosts, Loyalty)

Thirteen-year-old Jarett Ross has been no more than a ghost for months, crying alone in the darkness where no one can hear him. A drug-dealer put the moves on his mom, got her addicted to heroin, and now rules their small apartment in a rotting Victorian house. Jarett's only refuge from the man's brutality has been his tiny room, its door locked by a skeleton key. Then, late one rainy night, even that protection fails him.

After a nightmare of cause-and-effect, Jarett is battered, near death, and running from the police. He finds himself at the iron gates of an ancient graveyard where he waits to die, to be delivered from this world without hope. That's when Robbie, a homeless boy who lives in a crypt, arrives.

Hounded by the police that have never helped him, but driven by his desire to save his mother, Jarett is exhausted by life. Robbie encourages him to try to build a future from the bones of his past. But wouldn't it be easier to just stay in this peaceful place of the dead forever?

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