I’m so excited for you all to meet John, the narrator of FALSE FRIENDS, my new middle-grade mystery coming Fall 2027 from Regal House Publishing.
False Friends is contemporary fiction with a pinch of magical realism steeped in old Nordic folktales. Eleven-year-old John is stuck being babysat by his grandpa, his somewhat-estranged Morfar, for six entire weeks while his mother excavates a maiasaurus fossil in the badlands of Montana for her PhD. John has a lot of plans on how to get through these six weeks: make a countdown calendar, focus on writing his fantasy stories, collect more insects, avoid the school bullies, draw a zillion dragons, and just generally stay occupied. It's a preemptive strategy Dr. Frain has helped him learn to cope with his anxieties—stay busy.
But the clenched-fist-of-worry that resides in John's stomach isn't helping him out, and although John usually loves his ample imagination, the one that helps him picture his teachers as sword-wielding dragon-riders and his bullies as club-carrying, drooling cavemen, right now his overactive imagination is only working to rile him up. Morfar's Lincoln Park apartment should be fine. It's gothic-looking, with twisty spiral staircases, sure, and it has a full-blown fourth-floor turret. But it's close to Navy Pier, close to the Field Museum, and only a bus ride away from his school. But the apartment —as Morfar calls it "the manse" —is just a bit off-kilter, a little left-of-center, giving John a serious case of the creeps. The manse is home to a tamed pet crow named Mara, a bristly next-door neighbor with a vendetta against his Morfar, an attic full of mysterious forgotten objects, and a newfound mysterious friend who only appears exactly and only when John needs her. On top of all that, the manse, or someone in it, is leaving John anonymous clues, embroiling him in some kind of real or imagined mystery of the manse. What kind of mystery? John isn't sure. But he certainly aims to find out.
Is his grandfather simply a mild-mannered, boring history professor? Or should John investigate Morfar's eccentricities: his skull collection, his pet crow, his decades-old hidden Swedish maps and letters? And how is it that since living at the manse, John’s own running-through-a-labyrinth dream keeps syncing up with his actual, real life? It’s really too much for him to handle.
Through a serious, top-to-bottom investigation of the manse and thorough, detailed detective work, plus an impromptu trip to visit a Navy Pier psychic, John finds out that the real question about the manse and its cast full of colorful characters is this: Who exactly is John supposed to trust? And, most importantly, how can John – just a kid trying not to miss his mom, a kid with no friends and a stomach full of worries – how can he learn to trust himself?
False Friends is a middle-grade mystery with heart, embracing the struggle of growing up, of making—and losing—friends, of learning what it means to truly be brave, to take a chance, and to find a new friend —a true friend —in the most unexpected of places.