A fast-paced, dystopian tale of a near-future nuclear disaster told from a Christian viewpoint.
A nuclear strike over America effectively throws much of the Northern Hemisphere back to the Stone Age in O’Donnell’s apocalyptic thriller.
On May 24, 2022, three nuclear warheads detonate in the thermosphere above the United States. Sent by Iran—and facilitated by North Korea—the super electromagnetic pulse immediately wreaks havoc. Satellites become disabled, airplanes fall from the sky, cars stop working, and cellphones become useless. In Centennial, a suburb of Denver, the family of Bill Jenkins—a statistician with the Department of Agriculture who’s working out of Washington, D.C.—is already preparing for the worst. Jenkins, a “prepper of sorts,” has an underground bunker filled with a year’s worth of food and water for his wife, Viv, and their two sons, Brian and Mark. As the world devolves into chaos, the Jenkinses share their supplies with their surviving neighbors, Julie Price and her kids, Jack, Rocky, and Kate. But when people start dying of starvation, the group faces nomadic cannibals hunting for human prey. As life becomes a hellscape, Jenkins—living in an elaborate subterranean government bunker while working to get the country back on its feet—learns of a top-secret underground railroad system that connects cities all over the continent, one of which is Denver. Jenkins eventually gets the green light to find his family and return with them to Washington—but what he discovers in Colorado is beyond his darkest nightmares. This relentlessly paced, action-packed, and character-driven novel from the author of Meth War (2021) may strike some readers as a fusion of William R. Forstchen’s One Second After and Stephen King’s The Stand with a powerful Christian perspective. The story can get heavy-handed, however, when it comes to religion. Criminals, for example, are “men and women living their lives without God,” some of whom may “embrace Satan.” But any proselytizing fits seamlessly into the narrative as the Jenkinses and Prices find strength and wisdom in their faith-based lives to move forward in their quest to survive.
A fast-paced, dystopian tale of a near-future nuclear disaster told from a Christian viewpoint.Pub Date: July 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-66553-304-1
Page Count: 278
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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