A thrilling mind-freak of a mystery.
In Scozzari’s deliciously gruesome debut, a young professional learns the dangers of trusting friends.
Diana is a quirky young professional with a promising future. Her career as a business consultant is taking off, and she’s amassed a collection of close friends, including Ann (whom she’s known since high school) and her boyfriend, Arnold, a philandering former frat bro and current high school gym teacher. Diana’s somewhat-charmed life takes a turn when she starts having mysterious fainting spells. Ann (who’s convinced she’s Diana’s best friend) and Tim (her actual best friend) jump into protective mode; Arnold can’t be bothered. To make matters worse, Diana suspects that she’s the victim of frequent home invasions, unheard of in her ostensibly safe Long Island community. (“She waited in deafening silence for some midnight terror to burst through her door.”) A wild Fourth of July party becomes a catalyst for revelations regarding Diana’s friends that she hasn’t been able to confront. As her world begins to unravel, questions arise about Diana’s health, sanity, and who she can and can’t trust. Scozzari is a master storyteller, weaving tension throughout the entire narrative. The pacing is slow at first, but the narrative never feels like it lacks purpose. Details are revealed as Diana uncovers them, and readers will question her reality right along with her. This sense of the unknown—represented by the dark figure Diana thinks she sees breaking into her house, her unaddressed fainting spells, and the sense that she may be getting gaslit by multiple people—evokes an atmosphere of dread and menace that rivals the classic thriller and mystery stories Scozzari’s novel is paying homage to, like Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938). The characters are complex and fascinating, each possessing the means and motive to victimize the rest of the group, adding a Clue-like whodunit quality to an already engrossing domestic thriller. The author tells this labyrinthine story using clear prose with brutally violent descriptions that will delight fans of gothic literature, thrillers, and horror.
A thrilling mind-freak of a mystery.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798998781698
Page Count: 392
Publisher: EASEverything LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A haunting, timeless exploration of the evil men do—and the imprint it leaves behind.
A middle-aged woman channels her best Miss Marple when she finds herself facing a nightmare from her past as she seeks to make sense of her present.
Jane Trevally is at a crossroads of sorts. After a traumatic childhood, she sought safety and solace in marriages with wealthy men. Now twice divorced and living with her four dogs in the crumbling English country mansion that is her birthright, she’s feeling the need to do something, to take a job, when one day a runaway dog turns up on her doorstep. The dog is chipped, and with the help of a local vet and her loyal stepson, Dexter Lombardi, Jane traces the dog’s home to the edge of Hampstead Heath, in London—a place that brings back the memory of a terrifying night from her youth, when a handsome man picked her up and took her back to this very house. Everything there felt wrong; she just managed to escape, certain that if she had stayed, she would have died that night. Now, soon after knocking on the door and returning the dog, she discovers that he had run away from an Airbnb near her house, where he had been staying with a young woman who seems to have disappeared. With the help of Dexter; his father, Tony, her second ex-husband; Tony’s former security enforcer, Tobias Wilson; and her own gift for connecting with people, Jane sets out to find the woman, taking her first steps on the path to becoming a private investigator. While Jane serves as the heart of the novel, Jewell also narrates chapters from several other characters’ points of view, all of which chip away at the horror that is the house on the Heath. By slowly revealing past and present simultaneously, Jewell keeps the mystery fresh as she plays with Gothic tropes and the timeless imagery of “a house of horrors” embodying human sin. She doesn’t flinch from exploring the depths of depravity in this house—and its humans.
A haunting, timeless exploration of the evil men do—and the imprint it leaves behind.Pub Date: June 23, 2026
ISBN: 9781668033906
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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