The Influence

Everything is about to change...When Ross Lowry moves into his cousin's guest house in the small community of Magdalena, Arizona, he expects nothing more than breathing room and a brief respite from his economic woes.But something is not right in the desert.After a raucous party on New Year's Eve, the luck of the attendees undergoes an immediate U-turn. The rich and successful suddenly find themselves facing catastrophic failure while the less well-off are unexpectedly flush with good fortune.This is only the beginning...Soon the citizens of Magdalena are experiencing unnatural desires.Next their children begin to disappear and freakish creatures emerge from the surrounding wilderness.The community is unraveling at a frightening pace.But these are merely the early warning signs of a showdown with a powerful force of darkness that could obliterate the world forever, and only Ross Lowry sees the danger that lurks ahead...

From Booklist

Laid off from his engineering job, down-on-his-luck Ross accepts an invitation to live in his cousin Lita’s guest shack in the microscopic desert burg of Magdalena, Arizona. There he finds a simpler life that appeals to him, a girl he’s crazy about, and some hideous miniature kangaroos with rat faces. Okay, let’s back up. It was during local bigwig Cameron Holt’s New Year’s Eve party that the entire assemblage celebrated at midnight by shooting their guns into the air. The problem? Their bullets hit something. Something god-awful. Right now it’s stored inside Holt’s smokehouse. And its influence is bringing some people fantastically good luck and others bad—very bad. It’s also turning Magdalena into a jungle of mutated creatures that would make Dr. Moreau proud: gigantic chickens, zombie dogs, living cookies, animate scarecrows, whistling flowers, and oh-so-much more. Yes, the criminally overlooked Little might go a little too crazy here, but his small-town-loses-its-shit recalls his masterful The Mailman (1991), and that should be all the recommendation fans need. --Daniel Kraus

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