Billy — Whitley Strieber

Imagine a horrifying glimpse into the dark soul of a psychopath. Imagine a mother and father who, in all likelihood, will never see their son again. Imagine a little boy's terror after he is snatched from the safety of his home in the middle of the night.

Billy Neary is a healthy, well-adjusted twelve-year-old living with his family in Stevensville, Iowa. Typical of kids his age, he particularly likes going to the local mall to play with his friends in the video arcade. Barton Royal is an unhealthy, maladjusted forty-four-year-old, fat and sweaty, searching the world for his own lost boyhood. When he sees Billy he knows that he has found the extraordinary creature he has been looking for "the perfect child that he never was. And he knows that in a matter of a few short hours he will have Billy all to himself, to love, to cherish . . . But Barton Royal is a very angry man. And Billy is very small.

Though Mary and Mark Neary can hardly believe that their son is gone, they suspect with every passing minute that he is in ever deepening danger. But even their worst fears cannot comprehend the gruesome and chilling reality of Barton's hideous world and the secret black room beneath his house where Billy is held prisoner.

Presented from both Billy's and his kidnapper's points of view, Billy is a story so terrifying " and yet so passionately committed to the value of human spirit " that it will leave you breathless.