Taking place during the latter events of The Death Cure, Crank Palace tells the story of Newt like never before, from inside his own mind, as he searches for meaning in a life gone horribly wrong. Although Newt thought he was running away from his friends to save them from himself, along the way he meets a young mother named Keisha and her son, Dante, who end up saving Newt in a way he could never have imagined. From there, he experiences the gritty nightmare of life on the streets, running from the infected and those hunting them, until he ends up in the Crank Palace, the last dumping ground of those without hope. Leaving only a note, Newt departs the Berg before the Gladers return from their mission into Denver, Colorado.

And Newt can’t bear the thought of his friends watching him descend into madness as he succumbs to the virus. But now he has a burden that can’t be shared with Thomas and the others-the Flare. Newt has been to hell and back with his friends. That path leads to an old gothic tower in the woods, a place David had blocked from his memory, a house of horrors both past and present. In a terrifying display, right in front of the kids, the man utters threats until he chokes on his own tongue, sparking a series of events that drag David and his family back into the days of curses and murders, onto a path of unimaginable terror, all too familiar. But no sooner does he return than a stranger visits their doorstep, the son of Pee Wee Gaskins. Now David is back, his four children in tow, visiting his parents'' home, a place he has learned to cherish despite the evils that haunted his younger days. And Gaskins had a particular hatred for the Player family, then for David, himself, who barely escaped those years with his own life intact. Its climax came in human form, a monster of a man, one of the most notorious serial killers the nation has ever seen: Pee Wee Gaskins. The imagined curses of a people born centuries earlier, passed from father to son, mother to daughter, generation to generation. The threats, the kidnappings, the murders.

David Player has spent 30 years trying to forget the traumas of his childhood.

The author of the New York Times best-selling Maze Runner series leads us on a dark journey of generational horror as we visit The House of Tongues.

Crank palace lib e james dashner