{ "item_title" : "One of Us", "item_author" : [" Dan Chaon "], "item_description" : "A captivating new novel... As One of Us gleefully samples multiple registers -- comic, tragic, satiric, elegiac, poetic -- its mesh of archaic and contemporary styles becomes something quite arresting, a joy to read.--Hamilton Cain, The New York TimesA playfully macabre and utterly thrilling tale about orphaned twins on the run from their murderous uncle who find refuge in a bizarre traveling carnival, from master of literary horror Dan Chaon It's 1915 and the world is transforming, but for thirteen-year-old Bolt and Eleanor--twins so close they can literally read each other's minds--life is falling apart. When their mother dies, they are forced to leave home under the care of a vicious con man who claims to be their long-lost uncle Charlie, the only kin they have left. During a late-night poker game, when one of his rages ends in murder, they decide to flee. Salvation arrives in the form of Mr. Jengling, founder of the Emporium of Wonders and father to its many members. He adopts Bolt and Eleanor, who travel by train across the vast, sometimes brutal American frontier with their new family, watching as the exhibitions spark amazement wherever they go. There's Minnie, the three-legged lady, and Dr. Chui, who stands over seven feet tall; Thistle Britches, the clown with no nose, and Rosalie, who can foretell the death of anyone she meets. After a lifetime of having only each other, Eleanor and Bolt are finally part of something bigger. But as Bolt falls in deeper with their new clan, he finds Eleanor pulling further away from him. And when Uncle Charlie picks up their trail, the twins find themselves facing a peril as strange as it is terrifying, one which will forever alter the trajectory of their lives. An ode to the misfits and the marginalized, One of Us is a riotous and singularly creepy celebration of the strange and the spectacular and of family in its many forms.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/1/25/017/523/1250175232_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "28.99", "online_price" : "28.99", "our_price" : "28.99", "club_price" : "28.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "28.99" } }

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Cinephiles will spot the allusion to Tod Browning’s 1932 cringe fest Freaks in the title of Dan Chaon’s equally unsettling and mesmeric novel, One of Us. Killers and circus curiosities abound in both works, and the creepy chants of “One of us!” directed at the trapeze artist in the Browning film are echoed in this early 20th-century tale of orphaned twin siblings, the traveling carnival that takes them in and their supposed uncle who has a side gig as a serial killer. That may sound grisly, but a good chef can make any ingredient toothsome—and Chaon is a great chef. The twins are Bolt and Eleanor, teens with telepathic powers whose mother runs a boardinghouse in Oberlin, Ohio. They never knew their father, who traveled west to seek his fortune and never returned. After their mother dies in 1914 and the bank takes their house, a mysterious man calling himself Uncle Charlie comes to claim them, dosing them with laudanum to keep them from escaping. The kids don’t yet know that he’s a serial killer, although these days “he rarely gets to really enjoy it the way he’d like to.” Luckily, Uncle Charlie doesn’t know that the twins are killers, too, having slipped arsenic into a neighbor’s tea. A little poison stirred into drunk Uncle Charlie’s beer allows them to get away. They end up being taken in by Jengling’s Emporium, a traveling circus that includes a three-legged woman; a “dog-faced boy” who runs the rigged milk bottle toss; and a girl named Rosalie, who has a second head growing out of the back of her skull and who, when Bolt feeds her gruel, says, “Don’t I know you?” The novel grows more mystical and dreamlike as it progresses. Along the way, Chaon seasons the violence with meditations on God, death and much else. One of Us isn’t for the fainthearted, but readers who like thrillers that stimulate their intellect as much as their emotions will savor every unpredictable twist.