This novel is horror at its best—dark and deeply, delectably disturbing.
Set in late 19th-century Appalachia, Schrader’s horror novel follows a former Union Army captain who is forced to confront his nightmarish past.
The Civil War has recently ended (the story is set largely in 1866), and Nathaniel Carter commands a group of former soldiers who work as hired trackers; their primary means of employment is hunting down wayward “Confederate leftovers.” Jobs are becoming increasingly difficult to find, so when a rich industrialist named E. Hoffman Price, who lives in Ironwood, Pennsylvania (the town where Carter grew up), offers the team a lucrative fee to complete a mission, Carter readily accepts. The undertaking is as dangerous as it is mysterious—the crew is to travel deep into Appalachia, locate a remote gold mine owned by Price, and find out what happened to the all the people who worked there who have apparently disappeared. The trip to the mine quickly turns deadly, and by the time Carter and company reach an abandoned outpost near their destination, they realize something evil is permeating the place. When gruesome, giant humanoids attack them, Carter discovers that he can’t outrun his past. Traumatic events from Carter’s childhood involving his mother—memories that he hasn’t shared with anyone and has done his best to forget—begin to bubble to the surface in the most horrific ways. Schrader’s supernatural suspense novel boasts skillfully developed characters, relentless pacing, and jaw-dropping plot twists. The writing is filled with profound existential insights (“No matter how far we propel ourselves forward with trains, steamships, or rockets, and no matter our distractions—work, drink, play—we will never conquer the elemental forces of nature nor escape the nameless horrors within ourselves”), which may remind horror afficionados of the early works of horror master Robert R. McCammon.
This novel is horror at its best—dark and deeply, delectably disturbing.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2024
ISBN: 9798987498316
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Bad People Publications
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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