A captivating supernatural tale brimming with well-crafted drama and sensitive characterization.
A newly minted priest assigned a parish in a sleepy fishing village encounters its dark past in this thriller.
Father Tommy Hickey is fresh out of the seminary and disappointed to have drawn such a dismal inaugural assignment—he’s to take control of St. Peter’s Parish in Galilee, a fishing village in Rhode Island. To make matters worse, when he arrives, he quickly learns that his predecessor, Father Gilday, just recently died—the priest had been there for a half-century—and so he would have to begin his duties unsupervised, “thrown right into the trenches.” Slowly, Father Hickey is confronted by the oddness of Galilee—dozens of cats are regularly found dead around the church each morning. One local, Ted Roberts, complains that his dead mother angrily haunts him, and that Abaddon, Satan’s right-hand man, plans to come to her grave soon. Another parishioner, Janie, reveals that her young son, Peter, died as a result of her negligence and that his soul is imperiled. All of this might be connected to the town’s morbid past—a fisherman who raped and murdered women was killed by an angry mob of townspeople. In this novella—it’s not quite 100 pages—Tracey unravels a complex tale with great restraint and suspense. The plot is artfully unpredictable, and imbued with an ambient atmosphere of foreboding. The author’s prose is conspicuously unembellished and blandly earnest. Father Hickey, upon arriving at St. Peter’s, thinks aloud: “I sure could use a rescue from here.” Nevertheless, the draw of the tale is the story itself and its characters, drawn with psychological nuance. Tracey has fashioned an intensely gripping tale, a story intelligently undergirded by a thoughtful reflection on the elusiveness of one’s spiritual purpose on Earth.
A captivating supernatural tale brimming with well-crafted drama and sensitive characterization.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-66551-730-0
Page Count: 154
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 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.
