The Shibboleth

The Shibboleth by John Horner Jacobs, 393 pages

This is the second book in The Twelve-Fingered Boy trilogy.  Although you could probably pick up the action without having read the first book, I wouldn’t recommend it.  The story follows Shreve, who has the ability to take over people’s minds.  Shreve is basically in prison, although, since he is underage, it isn’t called that, while his friend, Jack, who discovered that he could fly, has been taken by Mr. Quincrux.  Shreve plans to get himself out of jail and also to free Jack but it won’t be easy.  Quincrux wants Shreve to join his organization and in the meantime something has been threatening many people in the entire world.  For some reason, a lot of people are unable to sleep.  Insomnia is rampant, and no one knows the cause.  Shreve suspects it’s cause is something that only someone like him, or other people in Quincrux’s organization can figure out, but isn’t sure that helping Quincrux is the right thing to do.  This is a good supernatural story that a lot of teens would like.