This is The Day the Earth Stood Still by way of Something Wicked This Way Comes: campy but haunting, and about ray-gun-shooting monsters as much as it is about bittersweet broken dreams. These lapses, thankfully, are bandaged with a gauzy, Bradburian magic. It’s a tightrope not even Martin can always toe: some paragraphs spiral out of control, and the climax is packed with coincidences and shortcuts, as if even the author is out of breath. It happened on Halloween.The world ended.And a dangerous Game br. Save up to 80 versus print by going digital with VitalSource. Not that this is entirely straight-faced-the central characters are a boisterous, joke-cracking bunch that never let things get too serious. Read 498 reviews from the worlds largest community for readers. Michael Martin and published by Balzer + Bray. Though it sounds farcical, Martin has a knack for making ominous hay of absurdities. Convinced that he has found the thing to kick-start his dull life in Bedford Falls (yes, that Bedford Falls Martin knows his Americana), Benji convinces his pals to keep secret what emerges: a smooth metal pod that begins communicating via doo-wop music.

A post–football game hangout with high-school magician Benji-aka Benji Blazes-and his three best buds goes wonky when they shoot a UFO right out of the sky and it crashes beneath lake ice. Martin’s follow-up to his breakneck, yet surprisingly moving, horror novel, The End Games (2013), trades zombie tropes for alien ones in this invigorating piece of sci-fi nostalgia.

The End Games by T. Michael Martin