An enjoyable western with contemporary sensitivities.
In search of adventure, a young man from Chicago finds more than he bargained for in the wilds of 1878 Colorado in McSweegan’s novel.
In the middle of the night, Nolan Carter, his younger brother, Brian, and their childhood friend, Davey Tyler, are sleeping by their campsite in the Colorado foothills when they are awakened by the sound of twigs snapping. Davey sits upright and is promptly shot in the head by an unseen assailant. Nolan and Brian grab their guns, begin shooting in the direction of the gunfire, and chase off their attackers. Brian has had enough of Colorado and returns to Chicago with Davey’s body. Nolan stays behind, still “looking for something.” Working as a freight hauler between Pueblo and Denver, he heads over to the rail station to check on potential hauling prospects. There he encounters Professor Maria Mitchell, who is in charge of three younger women (Mitchell’s younger sister and two former students) and in a state of distress. They are astronomers from Vassar College, traveling to Denver to view and record the 1878 total solar eclipse, stopping in Pueblo to change trains. But they have arrived in the middle of a railway war between two companies; the ladies, with their baggage and valuable telescopes in tow, are stuck in Pueblo. Nolan offers his hauling services and the action-packed narrative shifts into high gear. McSweegan seamlessly weaves together traditional frontier story elements with the sociological battles of the emerging Suffragette and women’s equality movements, then adds a hearty portion of astronomy. Descriptions of the solar eclipse, with daylight vanishing behind a blackened moon surrounded by a pulsing corona, are riveting (“it appeared like a giant black mouth about to devour us”). Desperados, gunfights, a quartet of marauding Indigenous people, dusty trails, and drenching storms are juxtaposed against Eastern refinement and comforts. Nolan, the soulful, newly-minted cowboy from Chicago, is a winning hero. During the long, treacherous journey to Denver, he discovers that young astronomer Cora Harrison is as indomitable as he.
An enjoyable western with contemporary sensitivities.Pub Date: March 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781509248322
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Wild Rose Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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