Dark Roads

A possible serial killer is loose along some Dark Roads in this new character-driven thriller. Seventeen-year-old Hailey’s parents are dead, so she moves in with her Aunt Lana and five-year-old nephew, Cash. Unfortunately, Lana’s husband, Vaughn, lives there too. Vaughn is a police sergeant in the small rural town. HeContinue Reading

The Institute

The Institute is a claustrophobic thrill ride that is perfect for fans of The Cube movies! Agnieszka, her four roommates, and two friends wake up trapped in her apartment in Poland. The stairs are barred. The elevator never comes when called. Their Wi-Fi, phones and internet are not working. ThreateningContinue Reading

Little Bandaged Days

Little Bandaged Days is the story of a mother’s slow descent into madness. The inevitability of the conclusion just fills the reader with dread throughout the entire book. The mother had issues after her first daughter’s birth. “I didn’t have a job, not anymore. Afterwards, after E was born, afterContinue Reading

The Weak Spot

Have you ever read a book that revels in its uncertainty? The Weak Spot unfolds like the feeling of waking suddenly from a dream. The dream story still lays atop reality in an unsettling balance. The narrator of this story is not only unnamed but also ungendered. Therefore, I’m usingContinue Reading

The Arrest

The Arrest caused the world’s power grid to cease. No more cell phones, computers, cars, or even planes. It is 1700 again. When everything stops working, Journeyman and his sister Maddy get stranded at her organic farm in Maine. Little do they know, but their life is about to beContinue Reading

White Ivy

Ivy is a first generation Chinese immigrant who has totally internalized the American Dream of being in the top 1% regardless of the cost. It fact, Ivy is trying to be what she thinks rich, white Gideon wants in a wife by becoming White Ivy. The pacing is more atContinue Reading

Come to Light

In Come to Light, Emit’s wife, Julia, and two of her friends went missing six years ago while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. When the skull of one of the friends is found after a storm on the PCT, Emit suspects his wife’s stalker ex-boyfriend, Guillaume. Unfortunately, Julia’s sister, Sara,Continue Reading

Snow

John Banville is much more famous for literary fiction than mysteries. It shows in Snow. The plot reads like a too-easy-to-solve Agatha Christie. A priest is murdered in a down-at-its-heels country manor house during a snowstorm with no signs of forced entry. However, the setting in 1950s Ireland with theContinue Reading