Picket Town

A Middle-Grade Sci-Fi Mystery Adventure

By: Chris von Halle

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Twelve-year-old Amanda Anderson is tired of living in the most boring town in America.

Every house on every street in New Pines looks exactly the same. Nothing exciting ever happens here—except for the mysterious illness sweeping through the schools, a strange bacterium doctors call the purple circle.

When Amanda convinces her best friend Sam to sneak past the fence that guards the woods outside town, they discover something shocking: an enormous, glowing alien sphere hidden in the clearing.

Suddenly, Amanda’s overactive imagination doesn’t seem so crazy. Why are the town leaders pretending everything is fine? Why does no one ever recover from the purple circle? And what secrets are the adults hiding about New Pines?

Amanda and Sam must decide if they’ll risk everything to uncover the truth—before the purple circle spreads, or the sphere awakens.

Perfect for fans of Goosebumps, Stranger Things, and City of Ember, Picket Town blends small-town mystery, friendship, and spine-tingling sci-fi suspense in a way middle-grade readers won’t forget.