Haunting and powerful, this dark little gem of a novel is an absolute must-read.
Hardy’s debut novel, a fusion of gothic horror, mystery, and supernatural fiction, focuses on women dealing with profound loss and loneliness.
The story begins as police interview Eddy Sparrow for reasons that aren’t immediately clear to the reader.Eddy is a woman whose recently deceased mother—chair of the history department at Georgia State University—was sent a manuscript before her death that was found buried in a canister in the backyard of an abandoned estate. The property, located in northern Alabama, was allegedly haunted, as was the manuscript, which is rumored to curse anyone who reads it. As Eddy talks to the police officer in her home over tea, she shares the heartrending story recounted in the manuscript, which chronicles the tragic life of Cat, who lived on the estate with her mother, Sarah, and her mother’s cheating boyfriend, Ray—“the man who ate [Sarah] from the inside until there was nothing left.” Watching her mother be physically and emotionally abused by Ray while helpless to stop it, Cat is devastated when her mother dies; compounding her grief, the courts send the minor back to the house to live with her mother’s abuser. Parts of the manuscript include excerpts from Sarah’s journal, which includes horrific revelations and charts her descent into madness at the end of her life. The innovative structure of the narrative—a journal within a manuscript within a police interrogation—works well to keep the reader turning pages, and the impressively deep character development makes the cast members feel authentic, identifiable, and emotionally dimensional—particularly in the case of Cat and her intense relationship with her mother. The mystery surrounding Cat’s mother’s death is kept tantalizing beyond reach until the very last pages, where bombshell plot twists will have readers picking their collective jaws up off the floor. But it’s the creepy atmospherics and the author’s dark, lyrical writing style that makes the story so unforgettable: Hardy describes an old well covered with rotting wood planks at its center as a “huge mouth that drank in the darkness.”
Haunting and powerful, this dark little gem of a novel is an absolute must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9781960018533
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Running Wild Press
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A standout in the series.
The sixth adventure of Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon explores the mysteries of human consciousness, the demonic projects of the CIA, and the city of Prague.
“Ladies and gentlemen...we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and in fact…the very nature of reality itself.” But first—Langdon’s in love! Brown’s devoted readers first met brilliant noetic scientist Katherine Solomon in The Lost Symbol (2009); she’s back as a serious girlfriend, engaging the committed bachelor in a way not seen before. The book opens with the pair in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons in Prague. It’s the night after Katherine has delivered the lecture quoted above, setting the theme for the novel, which features a plethora of real-life cases and anomalies that seem to support the notion that human consciousness is not localized inside the human skull. Brown’s talent for assembling research is also evident in this novel’s alter ego as a guidebook to Prague, whose history and attractions are described in great and glowing detail. Whether you appreciate or skim past the innumerable info dumps on these and other topics (Jewish folklore fans—the Golem is in the house!), it goes without saying that concision is not a goal in the Dan Brown editing process. Speaking of editing, the nearly 700-page book is dedicated to Brown’s editor, who seems to appear as a character—to put it in the italicized form used for Brownian insight, Jason Kaufman must be Jonas Faukman! A major subplot involves the theft of Katherine’s manuscript from the secure servers of Penguin Random House; the delightful Faukman continues to spout witty wisecracks even when blindfolded and hogtied. There’s no shortage of action, derring-do, explosions, high-tech torture machines, attempted and successful murders, and opportunities for split-second, last-minute escapes; good thing Langdon, this aging symbology wonk, never misses swimming his morning laps. Readers who are not already dyed-in-the-wool Langdonites may find themselves echoing the prof’s own conclusion regarding the credibility of all this paranormal hoo-ha: At some point, skepticism itself becomes irrational.
A standout in the series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780385546898
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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