Boy's Life cover
Young Adult

Boy's Life

2008512 pagesYoung Adult
Mood
Romantic, Tender
Protagonist
Jackie Howard, a sixteen-year-old orphan who moves.
Parental Rating
PG-13
Pace
Medium

Themes & atmosphere

Common questions

What you might want to know about Boy's Life

The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.

On a March morning in 1964, eleven-year-old Cory Mackenson rides his milk-route with his father and watches a car sink into a lake with a body inside. The mystery threads through a small Alabama town's strangest year.

Boy's Life was written by Robert McCammon and published in 1991. It is widely considered his masterpiece and won both the Bram Stoker Award and World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.

Boy's Life blends coming-of-age fiction with horror, fantasy, and Southern Gothic elements. It is more atmospheric and nostalgic than scary, often compared to Ray Bradbury and Stephen King's The Body.

Boy's Life is 379 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.

At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Boy's Life takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.

Boy's Life is a standalone novel by Ali Novak, not part of a series.

Boy's Life is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.

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