Book Synopsis

"Detective fiction is about getting to the bottom of things; weird fiction is about the abyss in its bottomless depths. "Hobtown Mystery Stories," in their layered and satisfying surrealism, are about both.... utterly weird, dreamlike." --New York Times Book Review

Return to Hobtown, the charming rural village in Nova Scotia at the heart of surreal and haunting mysteries, and home to the after-school Teen Detective Club dedicated to solving them. The third must-read volume of the page-turning series that the New York Times calls "forceful and haunting" starts here for the first time ever in a fully colored edition from creators Kris Bertin and Alexander Forbes!

The lines between conspiracy and reality tangle during election season in Hobtown as a new-old member of the Teen Detective Club surfaces to challenge Dana's leadership and redirect the group's attention back to the discounted but pressing concern that "ALIENS!" are among us. On a grander scale, amid the town's hotly contested mayoral race, the arrival of a flying saucer and a chaotic "Ape Lord" being pursued by the local Knitting Circle have the teen sleuths of Hobtown unsure if they're coming or going, as literal backward thinking tears at the threads of their friendships and their grasp on their latest case . . .

Review Quotes

"Detective fiction is about getting to the bottom of things; weird fiction is about the abyss in its bottomless depths. "Hobtown Mystery Stories," in their layered and satisfying surrealism, are about both.... utterly weird, dreamlike."-- "New York Times Book Review"

"Hobtown Mystery Stories: Secret of the Saucer is as structurally inventive as it is jam-packed with atmosphere. Alexander Forbes and Kris Bertin's surreal yet grounded storytelling makes this series something I wish my younger self could have been obsessed with."--Dave Baker (Mary Tyler MooreHawk, Halloween Boy)

"As captivating, eerie, and charming as it is addictive." -- "Geek Vibes Nation"

"Bizarre, disturbing, funny, and bursting with style and personality, HOBTOWN mixes the best and unexpected parts of things like Nancy Drew, Twin Peaks, and Ed Brubaker's Friday to create something inspired and wonderfully weird. I couldn't put this book down and I've become genuinely obsessed. Join me."--Alex Segura, New York Times-bestselling author of Secret Identity and Daredevil: Enemy of my Enemy

"Enticing.... Oni Press' Hobtown Mystery Stories series of graphic novels has developed a cult following in recent years, as these books essentially ask the question "What if Stranger Things were produced by A24?". These supernatural mystery tales all center around the small city of Hobtown, a place where cults, conspiracies, and curses are just a daily part of life." -- "IGN"

"I love Hobtown, it's charming, funny, sad, and genuinely unsettling, one of my fav comics!" --Sloane Leong (A Map to the Sun, Prism Stalker)

"Imagine reading The Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew, or Encyclopedia Brown through a David Lynch lens and you'll begin to get an idea of what it's like to turn the pages of Hobotwn Mystery Stories." -- "Daily Dead"

"Another perfectly unsettling slice of small-town high weirdness.... Uncanny and delightful....Forbes' art and Jason Fischer-Kouhi's colors are gorgeous here: muted, grainy, almost overly intimate. Think Twin Peaks school yearbook photos mixed with the bureaucratic matter-of-factness of a government UFO dossier... If you haven't paid a visit to Hobtown yet, it's a great (and eerie) place to start."-- "Boing Boing"

"Strange towns with strange occurrences are the bedrock of great genre stories. From Twin Peaks to Nilbog, it takes all kinds of places to conjure up the strange and unusual, and Oni Press knows a thing or two in those areas.... Captivating."-- "Macabre Daily"

"This is Nancy Drew meets Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet meets the Hardy Boys... Beautiful detailed artwork.. These are hidden gems that I think people are sleeping on... I couldn't put them down."-- "Near Mint Condition"

About the Author

Kris Bertin and Alexander Forbes are childhood friends who studied separate disciplines in order to reunite and make comics as adults. They grew up in Lincoln, New Brunswick, and live in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Kris Bertin and Alexander Forbes are childhood friends who studied separate disciplines in order to reunite and make comics as adults. They grew up in Lincoln, New Brunswick, and live in Halifax, Nova Scotia.