A ghost-hunting tale that should keep readers guessing until the final page; suspenseful and genre-bending.
A series of unsettling home invasions pushes a 42-year-old woman to the brink of insanity in this debut paranormal thriller.
Laurel Frost seems to have it all. Her husband, Cameron, is a high-powered defense attorney. And as a couple, they want for nothing: sports cars, a membership at a swanky country club, and a 5,000-square-foot McMansion in the country. But for the past several months, whenever Laurel leaves her home, she returns to find items out of place. In recent weeks, the mysterious intruder has turned bolder, sneaking into the couple’s bedroom in the still of the night. But no matter how many new security cameras, locks, and alarm systems are installed, the trespasser continues to elude detection, leading the police and Laurel’s own family to question her mental health. With the phantom intruder’s visits becoming increasingly violent, Laurel must take matters into her own hands before she loses her sanity and her marriage (“This had become something personal between she and the intruder, and she was going to handle it herself, her way”). This novel plays the field, providing equal parts psychological thriller, murder mystery, and paranormal fiction in one slim volume. Whether building dramatic tension or planting seeds of doubt, Schulden proves to be a more-than-able narrator. Twists and turns—including a grisly string of murders, a personal tragedy, and the introduction of a team of ghost hunters—keep this tale chugging along. But while the moving targets make for an engaging read, the book suffers from a few bumpy transitions. And instead of sprinkling her characters’ back stories throughout the text, the author tends to dole out exposition in chunks. Nonetheless, this novel—though somewhat unpolished—does not disappoint. Mystery aficionados will still find plenty of reasons to dig into Schulden’s multilayered plot.
A ghost-hunting tale that should keep readers guessing until the final page; suspenseful and genre-bending.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-615-74572-5
Page Count: 440
Publisher: Three Little Ladies Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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