A pulse-pounding thrill ride for retro-horror fans who are not faint of heart (or stomach).
A group of teens find themselves under siege by killer clowns in a tiny Midwestern town.
Moving from Philadelphia to tiny Kettle Springs, Missouri, wasn’t high school senior Quinn Maybrook’s idea of a fresh start after her mother’s death. After the town’s only doctor abruptly quit, Quinn’s ER doctor father, Glenn, took over his practice, a deal that included the deed to his rickety old house right next to a cornfield and the shuttered Baypen corn syrup factory, complete with a creepy mural of Frendo the clown, who also serves as the town mascot. Quinn notes the town’s dated feel and the palpable tension between teens and adults, which is especially stark at Kettle Springs High. Quinn meets cool kids Cole Hill, whose father owns Baypen, and Janet Murray, who loves to stir things up. When Quinn joins them at a party in a remote cornfield, the fun turns to terror: A murderous army of Frendos armed with crossbows crashes the party. Cesare’s twisty prose and believable, easy-to-root-for characters makes this blood-drenched tale of extreme societal unrest disturbingly plausible. Dark humor peppers this clever homage to retro-horror classics, and Cesare barely lets up on the gas once the bloodletting begins. Most main characters, except Janet, who is described as generically Asian, seem to be white.
A pulse-pounding thrill ride for retro-horror fans who are not faint of heart (or stomach). (Horror. 14-adult)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-285459-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
BOOK TO SCREEN
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
Admirably ambitious in scope and mystery.
A small-town sheriff uncovers centuries’ worth of secrets.
Growing up in historic Shereford, New Hampshire, Mandy Grady chafed at being the sheriff’s daughter. After sowing her wild oats in New York for a few years, though, she eventually returned to the tiny town of her youth, and became the new sheriff when her father died. She not only took on his role, but also his obsession with one case he never solved—a case that haunts the town: The disappearance of the entire Dixon family—both parents and four children—during a summer storm in 1998. In the present day, two glamorous, wealthy outsiders, Raquel and Theo Collins, have bought the old Dixon house and are looking to restore it, maybe transform it into a B&B. A stray dog leads them to a gruesome discovery on the property: a well that contains both human bones and a ledger belonging to an 18th-century midwife. Everyone in Shereford knows the old rhyme: “Ding dong bell, the witch is in the well.” Could it be based in truth? Betty and Mason, the enthusiastic heads of the town historical society, connect the ledger to a journal already in their possession and, together with Raquel and a reluctant Mandy, begin to fill in the story. A young woman appeared in Shereford in the midst of a blizzard in the early 18th century. Taking pity, the townsfolk begged her to stay—until babies started dying under her watch, and she was sentenced to death for witchcraft. Now Mandy has to figure out how these ancient sins are related to the more contemporary crimes—because someone in Shereford knows exactly what happened to the Dixons. Gardner deftly juggles a number of characters, plot threads, secrets, time periods, and motives, delivering a satisfyingly layered novel that interrogates the insular lives and histories of small towns.
Admirably ambitious in scope and mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9781538765142
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
