Howard

by Johnny Bowl

“Part coming-of-age, part tragicomedy, part neo-noir, part fantasy, part literary thriller, HOWARD is a tour-de-force of one young man’s mis-adventures in a post-adolescent world that has become as lifeless, plastic, desperately digitized and ruthlessly cutthroat as your average maximum security prison. A novel for the modern age, Howard, will at once remind you of Salinger’s Holden Caufield running through the rye, only in an age where the fields of rye have been replaced by pastel suburban mausoleums in which children pay dearly simply for the sin of having been born. This is a first novel by a young and promising new author not to be taken the least bit lightly.” —Vincent Zandri, bestselling author of The Remains

High school freshman Howard exhibits an eccentric and aggressive behavior that appears to be a simple plea for social acceptance, however the reality behind his motivations may, in fact, be frighteningly more bizarre.
Once Howard’s actions finally result in an aversion of him by his classmates, he finds both his mind and his world fully torn from the custody of reality. With the entire school a potential threat to his last ties with sanity, Howard turns to an inhuman power that is as destructive to his own self as it is to others.

“This is without a doubt one of the most suspenseful stories I have ever read. The descriptions of violence and the mental working of the main character keep you in constant uncertainty of where the story is going next. The author has a very tight grip on his descriptions of emotional behavior. The main character’s actions are often very convincing. It can get very over the top at times, however it maintains that feeling of weight to everything. Highly disturbing and engaging” 5-star Amazon review