TURN TO STONE

A teenaged runaway falls in with a cult that’s run by two sinister figures in this unsettling import. Unable to stomach his prospective stepfather, Nick jets off, and soon finds himself amid a coterie of street performers gathered at the remote estate of Dominic, a wealthy “art” dealer. They are there to study the art of being human toys and statues under the tutelage of Antonin, a weirdly intense master mime. Nick’s suspicion that all’s not quite on the up and up sharpens after the revelation that Dom had rescued Antonin from the asylum to which he’d been sent after committing a gruesome atrocity on a protégé—and becomes a certainty when a fellow performer’s sudden death is followed by a quick, quiet burial on the grounds. Gross lets the tale develop slowly, but eventually pulls the suspense moderately tight, throws in both an addictive, performance-enhancing drug and splashes of gore at the climax, then wraps it all up with a violent death for Antonin and a narrow escape for Nick and a lady friend. Good bedside reading, Bwahahaha. (Fiction. YA)