The X-Files meets William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist in the backwoods of Appalachia.
Doucette’s thriller follows an FBI agent haunted by a terrifying childhood trauma that threatens to destroy him—and countless innocents.
When FBI profiler Tom Milner was a child, he and his family moved from New York City to Betonville, Pennsylvania, a small town in the rural northwestern part of the state. One night, on a dare, the 5-year-old Milner and his best friend, Ben Potter, rode their bikes into the woods bordering the Allegheny National Forest—about a half-million acres of largely unexplored wilderness—where they were tasked by schoolmates with finding an old haunted cemetery under a bloodred moon. The spooky dare soon turned into a living nightmare; Milner thought he saw a giant, fur-covered creature crash through the darkness on the cliffs above him. The sound coming from the red-eyed thing was horrifying, and Milner and his friend barely escaped with their lives: “It was guttural and loud, like the enraged screams of a man mixed with the roar of a lion or a bear.” Decades later, working as one of the FBI’s most successful profilers (and struggling to stay afloat as a barely functioning alcoholic), Milner is called back to Betonville when a massive “boneyard” is discovered near the national forest. The site contains dozens of decomposed bodies whose deaths span over a century, and Milner knows instinctively that the carnage is somehow tied to the creature, who may or may not be a figment of his younger self’s imagination. With his old friend Ben (who’s now the Betonville sheriff) assisting him, Milner discovers a horrific truth: He is intimately connected to “Satan’s beast.” Doucette’s chilling novel is a darkly delectable offering sure to appeal to fans of police procedurals and supernatural thrillers. The blend of gritty crime fiction, local folklore, and paranormal fantasy is perfect, creating a storyline in which anything can happen. References to serial killers, satanic cults, bloody rituals, and even the TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000 add complementary layers of bladder-loosening horror and tonally spot-on humor to the story.
The X-Files meets William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist in the backwoods of Appalachia.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2026
ISBN: 9798247669944
Page Count: 478
Publisher: Solstice Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© 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.
