Latest Reviews
On a rainy night, Luke Oshel gets stood up halfway through dinner. But before his date walks off to the bathroom and never returns, she leaves an old photograph under her napkin --- Luke as a child, a dead body in the shadows of his bedroom, and a terrifying masked man. He has no recollection of this event. Then more photos disrupt his life --- Luke posing with murder victims, covered in blood --- and he falls back into the deep paranoia and repressed memories he has tried to leave behind. All the drugs and alcohol, therapy and hypnosis sessions have never conquered his deepest fear --- that he hasn’t escaped the hidden legacy of his late father, who killed his victims by blood loss. But now there is a new string of serial killings, and the evidence all points to Luke.
Ensconced in a fabulous apartment overlooking the Eiffel Tower, Cécile Duval is anxious for a post-divorce makeover. Who is Nina Berry, an on-the-rise personal stylist in America, to say no to a career-making proposal from an older, wealthy étranger? Except Cécile has secrets. She already knows Nina. Nina was her husband’s mistress, or so she believes. And Cécile doesn’t want a glow-up. She wants revenge. Arriving in Paris with her fiancé, Jean, Nina is ready to absorb all the city has to offer and transform her new client’s closet, confidence and entire life. But she has no idea what’s coming. Neither does Cécile. Because she’s not the only one keeping secrets. As the line between predator and prey disappears, a guessing game of deadly deceptions has only just begun.
Just before midnight, a car swerves to avoid something --- or someone --- mysteriously standing in the road, only to slam into a fallen tree instead. In the pitch black, four more cars follow in a pileup no one can seem to avoid. Stumbling out of the wreckage, five strangers find themselves in a backwoods dive bar, waiting for daybreak and hoping for cell service. But as tensions rise and a storm rages on outside, the occupants of the dive bar start to notice that not everything is as it seems. Time is moving differently, and they quickly learn that going outside --- whether to assist another accident victim or to hike for help --- is a very bad idea. There’s something in the woods, something that isn't natural. Could the figure in the road have been a warning? Or something more sinister?
During the conquest of Northern England, the fairy host sweeps across the countryside. The city of Durham finds itself surrounded. But the encircling forces are not fairies or even other humans, but trees that trap the city within an eerie wood. Ranulf, Bishop of Durham --- a consummate politician --- understands that the survival of the Northern English people depends on his finding a way to unite the two races, human and fairy. And he's not averse to improving his own position at the same time. With these aims in view, he sets off for the New Castle in search of the new King --- the leader of the fairy host, rumored to be a mysterious human boy, no more than 14 years old, who speaks no word of any human language.
Meet Penny Padgett, a 27-year-old cartoonist in Philadelphia who agrees to pet-sit a very peculiar cat named Godfrey in her home. At first, he’s a warm and affectionate companion who follows Penny all around the house and insists on sleeping by her side every night. But soon strange things are happening: Penny is haunted by disturbing and violent nightmares. There’s a terrible insect infestation in her basement. Her cute cartoon illustrations turn dark and surreal, as if influenced by some invisible hand. And her health starts failing, as if her mind and body are under attack by a sinister, malevolent force. Penny may be a cat person, but she’s starting to think Godfrey is no ordinary cat.
Rachel Holloway has built a quiet life in London. She has a daughter, a partner and a steady job at the local paper. Then the paper launches a true-crime podcast, and their first case is the disappearance of 12-year-old Molly Forster, missing since her family's brutal murder 12 years ago. But Rachel knows exactly what happened to Molly. Because Rachel is Molly. She's spent years hiding from the killer who destroyed her family, and now her own podcast is about to expose her and the truth she's buried. As the story goes viral, new evidence emerges that confirms what Rachel has known all along: The wrong man was convicted. The real killer is still free. And he's coming for Rachel.
After the bloodshed in Fenton, Arizona, former Detroit cop Kurt Argento had to disappear. He reemerges in the small town of Barton, South Dakota, working under an assumed name as a church handyman. But then he meets 17-year-old Majed, a Syrian refugee trying to build a life in Barton with his single mother. Two men with hard eyes are close behind. Argento steps in, and Majed’s pursuers retreat with a thin excuse about a stolen wallet. It turns out that Majed isn’t just in trouble --- he’s a target. And the hunters are closing in. To safeguard Majed, Argento hits the road with the boy, pushing west. And along the way it becomes clear that whatever Majed knows --- or carries --- someone powerful wants it and will kill to get it.
At Northwick Author Development Academy, an elite incubator for the creative class, originality is both fetish and mandate. Its candidates arrive ravenous for distinction --- only to discover, after a year of carefully engineered “disorientation,” that their work has converged into something eerily uniform. When a student in the sophomore cohort, Carl Sample, announces his intention to provoke a stranger into punching him --- an act pitched as both personal exorcism and artistic experiment --- the action seems grotesque, comic and vaguely prophetic. Before Carl can enact his plan, another student is assaulted in town. This emerging crisis of coincidence binds the cohort in a tightening web of surveillance and mythmaking, as intention and event fall fatally out of sync.
In Dublin, as the 18th century nears its end, a young musical virtuoso comes of age. John Field is preternaturally gifted, and his family has visions of him becoming the next Mozart. His talent eventually takes him to Russia, where he becomes a famous pianist and composes dreamy, languorous melodies that enchant the night air. John calls them nocturnes, but the prodigy who immortalizes them is Chopin. Oceans away in Pondicherry, in French India, Adelaide Percheron is raised by her imperious, enterprising grandmother. Her cousins give her the name Percherette, an impish reminder that she is not one of the crowd. Without a connection to aristocracy or the luxury of riches, only marriage seems to offer prosperity --- until she sets her sights on a pianoforte.
In Victorian England, no woman --- not even a brilliant economist like Reina Martin --- is allowed to open her own bank account. Together with her mentor, the powerful banker William Farlow, Reina will build the first all-women’s bank, where women can manage their own financial security. But soon she is shocked to discover that her enigmatic butler, John Pembroke, is an undercover police detective. He’s been assigned to investigate Farlow, who’s suspected of financial crime on a scale so massive that it could destabilize the British economy. Pembroke needs Reina’s expertise for a high-stakes nighttime heist to obtain incriminating evidence. Now she faces the agonizing choice of betraying her mentor or turning her back on thousands of working-class families who stand to lose everything.
