The Devil's Alphabet (Daryl Gregory)

This is not my favorite of Gregory's books (that I've read so far, anyway), but still really good. Years ago the residents of a small town in Tennessee suddenly started to change - some became huge, tall and strong, some grotesquely fat, some red-skinned and hairless (and spontaneously pregnant, always with girls). Many died in the transition. A few were skipped over, not changing at all, including the narrator who escaped to Chicago after the quarantine was lifted. Now he's come back to town for the funeral of a dear friend and is drawn back into mysteries within mysteries, relating to drugs, violence, death, and the true nature of this metamorphosis. I loved his other books for their view from inside madness; the narrator here is rather tamely sane, so I never felt drawn into the wonder of the story quite so much. Gregory does explore the nature of family, including the narrator's strained relationship with his father and how family and children shape our view of the world.