Wells author and former Edgecomb pastor Steve Burt is at it again, this time bringing us another superb thriller, "Challenge the King," the third in his Maine Allagash Gargouilles series.

Maine readers have been waiting for the return of the three human-like gargouilles—Luna, Yvette and Pernod. Now they’re back in Wells with the three babies they recently hatched in carrier slings. They’re on the king’s hit list and desperately need help again from the local bookseller Maryann, her daughter Keegan and BFF AJ, and three Wells cops. The king’s flying monkeys have orders from Captain Ronsomme to capture or kill the trio and the babies.

But the fugitives have run out of hiding places—until the bookseller remembers a remote writers retreat between Moxie Pond and Moxie Falls, Maine’s highest waterfall. But gargouilles don’t venture out in the daylight, they fly and fish at night, and the Moxie Gore area is patrolled after dark by hunters in military fatigues with guns. Add Faucon to the mix, the huge, villainous, one-legged gargouille who tried to kill Luna in Wells. Faucon is also being hunted by the king’s assassins but needs the Wells humans to find him a hideout. The battle and the final showdown are breathtaking.

"Challenge the King" is Burt’s latest installment in the popular series. The debut novel, "The Bookseller’s Daughter," won the 2019 New York Book Festival Grand Prize, and the follow-up, "Protect the Queen" won the 2023 Hollywood Book Festival prize for Best Sequel.

Burt's "Challenge the King," and his others, will be available at the Shaker Hill Apple Festival in Alfred Sept. 19-20 and at the Oct. 10-11 Summer Solstice Arts and Crafts Fair at the Wells Junior High School on Route 1. The book will also be on Amazon and in all Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Store branches on the Maine coast.