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FORETELLER

Name: FORETELLER
Author: Anne McAneny
ISBN: 978-1470123284

by Anne McAneny ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 7, 2012

Will appeal especially to readers who like a pinch of the paranormal with their suspense.

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In McAneny’s debut thriller, a smart, snarky archaeologist digs up clues surrounding her mother’s death.

When Kyra Collette changed her name to Zoey Kincaid to elude an obsessed college friend, she had no idea that, a decade later, a far more dangerous man would pursue her with deadly intent. In love, pregnant and rather pleased with herself for her detached and sardonic outlook on life, Zoey is blindsided to learn that her mother’s fatal stroke had been caused by a sexual assault. When the family attorney directs her to a safe-deposit box in Virginia, she finds only a letter—but one that predicts her death by the hand of the same rapist, Corbin Black, whom Zoey fears may be her real father. A falling out with her fiancé sets her on a solo quest to unearth the truth about and origins of her mother’s premonition, with only the amiable detective Farnham on her side. Ignorant to the details of her own history, Zoey tracks down her mother’s confidants and estranged sister—all while keeping one step ahead of Black and college stalker Cesar Descutner, the latter tormented by his own psychic tendencies. The swift pacing and tight unfolding of clues makes the book an enjoyable and involving read, particularly as the point of view shifts from Zoey to Corbin to Cesar, keeping readers apprised of each character’s progress and chilling intentions. The shifting perspective of the narrative is less effective when it jumps erratically to minor characters, and a few tangential revelations could have been better placed. However, the distraction is minimal. Although an overly long explanation of the story’s red herring takes some bite off the ending, the buildup to the denouement brings satisfaction. A fresh, snappy thriller that doesn’t dig too deeply for subtext.

Will appeal especially to readers who like a pinch of the paranormal with their suspense.

Pub Date: March 7, 2012

ISBN: 978-1470123284

Page Count: 256

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: May 24, 2012

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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CUJO

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1981

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King goes non-supernatural this time—and the result, despite the usual padding, is a tighter, more effective horror novel. We are once more up in Castle Rock, Maine, ayuh, where the natives are striving to survive some earlier King visitations of the unspeakable. Recent arrival Vic Trenton, who has brought a big ad account with him from New York, is having a hard time hanging onto both the Sharp cereals campaign and his wife Donna, who has just severed an affair with a filthy-poet/furniture-stripper. Meanwhile: Joe Camber, an alcoholic auto mechanic, is angry at wife Charity for wanting to take their son Brett on a visit to her folks (he's afraid Brett will get a taste of sane family life that will show up Joe's madness), but finally—figuring that he'll have a hot time while she's gone—Joe agrees. And all of this sets the scene for some big, extended horror sequences hi Joe's yard. You see, Brett's 200-pound St. Bernard ("Cujo") has chased a rabbit into a big hole also occupied by bats, and a rabid bat bites Cujo's nose. Soon the dog is acting queerly, slavering, and going mad with a headache that warps his thinking about men: Cujo is lost in a mist and can't be found the day Charity and Brett leave. The first to die is Joe's buddy Gary Pervier—who lives just down at the foot of the hill from Camber's yard and crosses Cujo hi his own yard. Later, when Joe finds Gary's body he himself has but two minutes or so to live. And next Donna's car breaks down, so she drives it into Camber's yard with her four-year-old Tad: they're attacked in their car and kept there for three days, even after an investigating cop is killed. Finally, then, there's the dog-versus-woman showdown as savaged Donna, now half-crazed, kills Cujo with a ballbat—but it's too late to save Tad, whose heart gives out. . . . The inevitable film is going to be hard on St. Bernards and may even seriously affect their good-guy image. But, the ASPCA notwithstanding, there's no denying that King's three-day vigil in the carnage has a solid hook that will hold his fans; and his Maine humors do offer witty relief. so once again. . . the moola will flow.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1981

ISBN: 0451161351

Page Count: 324

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1981

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
NEVER FLINCH
by Stephen King

- BOOK REVIEW
YOU LIKE IT DARKER
by Stephen King

- BOOK REVIEW
HOLLY
by Stephen King

- PERSPECTIVES
Don’t Be Scared: Try a New Genre

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THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE

by Muriel Spark ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 17, 1961

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An attention-getting writer (novels, Memento Mori. The Ballad of Peckham Rye, The Bachelors, and short stories, The Go-Away Bird) pursues her multi-personae interests, her concern with religion, and her refusal to allow the reader to be at one with her purpose. Here she disperses her story (a loose but provocative thing) over an extended — and interrupted — period (thirty years) during which Miss Brodie, (in her prime) holds young minds in thrall, at first in delight at the heady freedom she offers from the rigid, formal precepts of Edinburgh's Marcia Blaine (day) School, later in loyalty to her advanced sedition against the efforts to have her removed. Finally the girls grow up — and Monica, Rose, Eunice, Jenny, Mary, and Sandy, (particularly Sandy with her pig-like eyes) separate, and the "Brodie set" dissolves- with war, death, marriage, career, and conversion to Catholicism. But there still is a central focus — who among them betrayed Miss Brodie to the headmistress so that a long-desired dismissal was effective? In this less-than-a-novel, more-than-a-short story, there is the projection of a non-conformist teacher of the thirties, of a complex of personalties (which never becomes personal lives), and of issues which, floating, are never quite tangible. But Muriel Spark is sharp with her eyes and her ears and the craftiness of her craftsmanship is as precision-tooled as the finest of her driest etching. With the past record, the publisher's big push, and The New Yorker advance showing, this stands on its own.