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The latest from Jacobs (Lying With Strangers, 2013, etc.) is long on suspense but short on surprise as it plunges toward its...

A single indiscretion threatens a businesswoman’s family and friends.

Conference presentations have never been Marta Crawford’s forte. A former Boston Globe reporter, she’s always handled the creative side of C&M Advantage, leaving the marketing of the public relations firm to her partner, Carol Hogan. But when Carol gets sick the night before, Marta flies out to Minneapolis to pinch-hit. Nothing goes right. The presentation bombs, her husband, Gordon, and ugly-duckling teenage daughter, Jamie, don’t even call to wish her a happy 40th birthday, and she ends up alone in a bar drinking something called a Pink Moose. Pretty soon, she’s not alone. Handsome, younger Todd Wilson sidles over, intrigued by her colorful beverage. The rest of the evening is kind of a blur, but the next morning Marta wakes up in a strange hotel lying next to her new pal. Scared and ashamed, she flies back home, trying to ignore the barrage of text messages from Todd. What she can’t ignore is Todd himself when he shows up in Sterling, Georgia, where the Crawfords have been trying to make a new life ever since Gordon was let go from Tufts University for sexual harassment. Pretending to be interested in buying a house in their neighborhood, Todd befriends the lonely academic, who’s still smarting at being banished to lowly Howell College. He continues to court Marta with flowers and sticky buns. But when he sets his sights on Jamie, he crosses a line that Marta can’t ignore.

The latest from Jacobs (Lying With Strangers, 2013, etc.) is long on suspense but short on surprise as it plunges toward its creepy but entirely predictable conclusion.

Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-4328-3112-7

Page Count: 355

Publisher: Five Star/Gale Cengage

Review Posted Online: July 15, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

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THE SILENT PATIENT

Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.

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A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.

"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.

Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.

Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Celadon Books

Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018

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