FantasticLand

Ideal for fans of Lord of the Flies and Battle RoyaleA gripping thriller in which an amusement park becomes the scene of a real-life nightmareWritten as an investigation with first-person interviews When online personas take the place of private identities, what happens when those societal constructs disappear? The employees of FantasticLand find out after a hurricane hits the Florida coast. FantasticLand has been the theme park where “Fun Is Guaranteed!” for nearly forty years. After the hurricane, detectives and others who make it to the survivors more than a month later discover a scene out of a nightmare. Evidence of grisly murders are all over the park. Yet the only ones who could have committed these savage and horrible acts were the college-aged employees. What drove them to such violence? According to park policy, employees gave up their electronic devices to make FantasticLand more authentic. When the hurricane hit and they were left to their own devices, the teens split into rival tribes. To survive, they compete for social dominance, medicine, human flesh, and food. Fans of thrillers and murder mysteries will love FantasticLand: A Novel. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

"In clear, conversational prose, Fantasticland creates its world--and then carefully, horribly dismantles it. Mike Bockoven has made something at once merciless, terrifying, and curiously humane; but you should probably not go there after dark." —Zack Handlen, the AV Club "Utterly horrifying and impossible to put down—for a dozen reasons, but most of all, for how plausible the whole thing feels. Do not read this book after eating." —Rob Hart, author of the Anthony Award-nominated NEW YORKED “Fantasticland is one wild ride! Disaster and isolation ratchet up the tension, and a theme park descends into mayhem that is both engaging and thrilling. Put your hands up and plunge in!” —Scott Seeke, author of Uncle Bush's Live Funeral, writer of the Sony film Get Low "In the FantasticLand park itself, already a surreal mix of historical and pop-cultural structures, characters, and imagery, then mostly flooded and empty under rainy skies, what happens when less-than-fully-formed identities are forced to endure a month with no external contact?This grim, but not hopeless, novel is the answer." —William Grabowski, Hellnotes.com "FantasticLand [is] totally up our alley. And with its setting of a theme park that’s been ravaged by a hurricane, it couldn’t be more timely." —Dread Central

Mike Bockoven writes thriller/horror novels while his kids are in gymnastics class or at piano lessons. He lives with his wife, Sarah, two daughters, Emaline and Tessa and an exceptionally dumb wiener dog names Sherlock. You can find him at his website, mikebockoven.com, on Facebook (facebook.com/Bockovenbooks) and on Twitter @mikebockoven. He lives in Grand Island, Nebraska.