An impressive gathering of stories that entice and unnerve.
The small mountain town of Georgetown is a hub for ghostly figures and ferocious creatures throughout history in editors Stein (Anna and the Vampire Prince, 2017, etc.) and Viola’s (Blackstar, 2015, etc.) horror anthology.
In Travis Heermann’s opening story, “Deep Veins,” brothers Frank and Emmet Grubbs are prospecting for gold circa 1861. With little to show after weeks of work, they opt for blasting open a 2-foot hole in a vein of quartz. Inside are signs of the precious metal—and also a humanoid creature with gleaming eyes. Subsequent tales, appearing chronologically, share the same setting—an ostensibly innocuous town with underlying horrors. Betsy Dornbusch’s “The Silver Belle,” for example, is a murder mystery set in the year 1875; Detective David Cook rides into town to look into the strangling death of Annabelle Shine. But events quickly escalate after another murder and sightings of Annabelle’s apparent apparition. Nearly a century-and-a-half later, in 2017, Detective Sandra Gonzales (in Mario Acevedo’s “Her First Husband”) investigates a missing person case in which the main suspect’s bogus ghost story isn’t the scariest part. Carrie Vaughn’s “Harry and Marlowe Versus the Haunted Locomotive of the Rockies,” meanwhile, features the titular British duo, “part tourists, part spies, and part archeologists,” on the hunt in 1899 for anything new and innovative, riding a train whose previous passengers have disappeared. The stories are breezy, quick reads overall, often boasting sharp prose. One particular highlight is Stephen Graham Jones’ striking “Argentine Pass,” in which the narrator sees a man with “his ratty hat brim pulled low, his face dirty behind that. Dirty and smiling. It gave me the chills. I’m not proud.” Another standout among the stories in this solid collection is Sean Eads’ 1882-set “A Bouquet of Wonder and Marvel,” featuring a charming Oscar Wilde coming to the aid of a gardener, Benson, who’s worried about Georgetown’s “unearthly silence.” Brian Keene closes the book with a warmhearted tribute to his friend, the late multigenre author Tom Piccirilli.
An impressive gathering of stories that entice and unnerve.Pub Date: June 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9986667-5-4
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Hex Publishers
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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