Towering Pines Volume One: Room 509

Mystery & Thrillers

By Bruce A. Sarte

Publisher : Bucks County Publishing

ABOUT Bruce A. Sarte

Bruce A. Sarte
Bruce lives just outside of Philadelphia with his wife and four children. In addition to writing, he enjoys baseball, playing guitar, reading, church, cooking and being a dad.

Bruce grew up at the Jersey Shore (the picture is at Point Pleasant Beach, where Sands of Time is  More...

Description

Towering Pines Volume One: Room 509 is the story of a teenage basketball star who feels his life is over when he is sent to military school to commute an aggravated assault charge. Liam Rider's star quickly falls as he finds military school to be far more than he had bargained for. He finds the cadets harsh and abrasive; and the staff less than welcoming. When the guidance counselor tells him that he is going to be set back a year because of his remedial classes at public school, he feels like life couldn't get any worse. When he meets Lisbeth Harrington, he feels like the tide may be turning in his favor. She is assigned to help him acclimate to his new surroundings in the middle of a semester and he quickly realizes that she is the only friend he has at the school. And when he begins having disturbing dreams of kids killing each other and seeing people in his room that aren't really there, he enlists he help to find out why no one has been assigned to room 509 for twenty years — and why he is being tormented by the ghosts of cadets past. Suddenly pulled into the past of the historic school by nightmares of his own suicide, Liam and Lisbeth are catapulted forward into the hidden history of ghosts, suicide and murder. Can they solve the mysteries of the military school before Liam becomes the next victim of the paranormal murderer?

Towering Pines was born out of the idea to set a ghost story at a historic site that no longer existed. I chose Admiral Farragut Academy in Pine Beach, NJ because of my time there and knowledge of the surrounding area. The idea for Liam was based on a combination of arrogant teenagers I knew growing up -- and then I added the change that can be affected by attending the school to account for his growth as a person. Lisbeth is actually a combination of Lisbeth from Stiegg Larsson's novels and Sookie Stackhouse's spunk.

"Harry Potter for grown ups! Or... almost grown ups"..."rivals Twilight for the teenage attention span in every way" ... "page turner that mixed just the right amount of teen-angst with ghosts and magic --OnlineBookReview.Com

It involved me with the characters and the mystery and chilled me quite effectively with its ghost story....the intended audience of the book [will] enjoy the scenes that blur the lines between dream and reality. --BookWenches.Com

...a fantastic novel... The suspense captures the reader until the very end. The plot was solid and easily intertwined the characters throughout the storyline. --BittenByBooks.Com

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