Anyone else familiar with McCammon? fans of IT could do a lot worse than his novel Boy's Life, which I read last summer. For a great evocation of childhood in small town America (plus thriller/horror), I've not read better since I read IT back in 1989.

Here's a synopsis (contains spoilers):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy's_Life_(novel)

You might have to copy and paste to go directly to the link, otherwise you will probably get the Wiki disambiguation.