Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the New York Times bestselling author of the BookTok fave MEXICAN GOTHIC, among many other books. She returns just in time for the beach season with a truly eerie story that combines Mexican horror movies and Nazi occultism, a long-standing cinematic mystery, lost films and the glory of effective cinema. As one woman probes the pieces of a director’s forgotten unfinished opus, she also discovers that she is a far more powerful being than she had ever thought. SILVER NITRATE is a sophisticated, scary hotbox of a rollercoaster thriller.

The book stars Montserrat, a talented woman who suffers from being overlooked as a sound editor. She won’t drink or run with the boys in charge of the film industry in ’90s Mexico City. Her best friend, Tristán, is also her love interest, a washed-up soap star who made a fatal mistake in his past.

"I loved this book. The story is wild and unexpected, and the characters are all good-hearted people learning some very real lessons about what they are truly made of, emotionally and spiritually."

When they both hit a certain career skid, Tristán downsizes and discovers that his new neighbor is cult horror director Abel Urueta. As the friends get to know Ureuta better, he claims that he has a way to change their lives --- magically and with a movie. At first, his raucous story of a famous Nazi occultist literally putting a spell into highly volatile silver nitrate film stock strikes them as insane. Since the magic film is incomplete, Urueta says that the spell has cursed his life and ruined his career.

Urueta tells Montserrat and Tristán that their help in shooting a missing scene will lift the curse and break the demonic spell it has cast over everyone involved in the lost film. Montserrat is soon followed by a dark presence, while Tristán confronts apparitions of the ghost of his ex-girlfriend. Another successful soap actor and his longtime love, she perished in a car accident that he walked away from with a damaged eye and a newly smudged reputation.

Moreno-Garcia creates a tense and engaging thriller that preys on all the strange and terrifying things we believe in a horror film. By siccing these evil spirits on protagonists in the real world, the possibilities and imaginative spirit of movies take these believers into their clutches. The story takes off from a partially true history lesson to a dark and stormy journey into a world with two people ill-equipped to face the consequences of this occult nightmare.

SILVER NITRATE is an exciting story for movie buffs and thrill-seeking mystery fans alike. The three main characters are ruefully drawn, putting us in all of their shoes throughout the novel --- a dramatic surge that takes us from disbelief to belief and then back to disbelief. The mystery turns inside itself like the famous Winchester House, bringing us to dead ends and then turning us around to face a blisteringly hot detail that changes the face of the narrative completely.

I loved this book. The story is wild and unexpected, and the characters are all good-hearted people learning some very real lessons about what they are truly made of, emotionally and spiritually. SILVER NITRATE, like its flammable real-life self, threatens to self-immolate several times but always pulls back on the craziness to hoist us into a new level of terror and discovery.