An edgy, terrifying, and shocking tale for hardcore horror fans.
A Maryland surgeon’s experimental, potentially revolutionary treatment sparks unexpectedly violent results in this novel.
Dr. Paul Laden quickly notices something peculiar about the new hit-and-run victim in the emergency room. Though the patient is alive, his heartbeat and breathing are so faint they don’t register on the hospital’s machines. Amazingly, Laden also spots a wound seemingly healing itself. Keeping mum about what he’s witnessed, the doctor wheels John Doe to his research lab at the hospital. Once he declares John dead, he can experiment on his sedated patient as much as he pleases. Laden soon determines that John’s blood can kill viruses, and his internal organs may be capable of regeneration. Without divulging specifics, so that the fame and resultant wealth will be his alone, Laden offers to pay for organ transplants for three patients residing in various states. He chooses intellectually disabled Evelyn Stroman; Tyler Carson, who has Down syndrome; and Jason Scott, who suffers from Parkinson’s. Laden is certainly hopeful but can’t quite anticipate the changes that these patients ultimately experience. What happens to them leads to a startling level of violence both within and outside the patients’ lives. Jefferson’s horror story is harsh, frightening, and frequently graphic. While the book initially centers on Laden and his experiments, the latter half shifts to the transplant recipients, primarily Evelyn. The author’s prose throughout is crisp, unflinchingly detailing scenes of rape, mutilation, and spurting blood. The majority of the characters are unsympathetic, particularly Evelyn’s appalling, callous mother, Margaret. As such, some individuals subjected to brutality won’t earn much pity from readers. This nevertheless does not allay the novel’s disconcerting tone, which courses through the entirety of the narrative. Specifics on John and his perplexing condition don’t surface until the end, though much of the plot remains unresolved by the sequel-teasing denouement.
An edgy, terrifying, and shocking tale for hardcore horror fans.Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4834-8508-9
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2020
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.
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