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THE GHOSTS OF ROME

Top-notch storytelling filled with emotion and drama.

A small band of heroes tries to thwart the Nazi stranglehold on Rome.

In 1944, “Satan went walking in Italy,” and German troops occupy the Eternal City. They leave the tiny Vatican alone in exchange for the pope’s strict neutrality, although at any moment they could crush its quarter of a square mile in the blink of an eye. Against His Holiness’s apparent wishes, a daring group in the Vatican harbors the Choir, a band of Escape Line activists who help Allied POWs and other fugitives evade enemy capture. Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, a real historical figure, leads the rescue efforts at great personal risk and despite apparent disapproval by Pope Pius. My Father’s House (2023) established the basic premise: Save as many people as possible from the villainous Obersturmbannführer Paul Hauptmann. In this exciting sequel, an Allied airman is shot down and wounded, parachuting to an uncertain fate. The Choir brings him in, but he desperately needs medical help to save his life. They can only find a French medical student who has never performed surgery before, and she risks her life to help. The characters are memorable: Monsignor O’Flaherty speaks seven languages, is “fluent in silences,” and often breaks his vow of obedience to papal authority. The widowed Contessa Giovanna Landini shows great courage in standing up to Hauptmann, even when he takes over her home. Meanwhile, Himmler sends Hauptmann a top-secret communiqué warning of the Führer’s “intense displeasure” that the Escape Line still exists. Hauptmann is ordered to complete the job of liquidating the “criminals” escaping into Rome and “smash the Escape Line. Or face the inevitable.” Himmler reminds him that his family is living in Berlin. The story is exciting and rich with prose that’s a joy to read: An American looks at the night sky and declares, “The angels ride Harleys.…The stars are their headlights coming.” This well researched novel can stand on its own, but readers may find even more enjoyment reading My Father’s House first.

Top-notch storytelling filled with emotion and drama.

Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025

ISBN: 9798889660620

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Europa Editions

Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024

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WITCHCRAFT FOR WAYWARD GIRLS

A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.

Hung out to dry by the elders who betrayed them, a squad of pregnant teens fights back with old magic.

Hendrix has a flair for applying inventive hooks to horror, and this book has a good one, chock-full with shades of V.C. Andrews, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Foxfire, to name a few. Our narrator, Neva Craven, is 15 and pregnant, a fate worse than death in the American South circa 1970. She’s taken by force to Wellwood House in Florida, a secretive home for unwed mothers where she’s given the name Fern. She’ll have the baby secretly and give it up for adoption, whether she likes it or not. Under the thumb of the house’s cruel mistress, Miss Wellwood, and complicit Dr. Vincent, Neva forges cautious alliance with her fellow captives—a new friend, Zinnia; budding revolutionary Rose; and young Holly, raped and impregnated by the very family minister slated to adopt her child. All seems lost until the arrival of a mysterious bookmobile and its librarian, Miss Parcae, who gives the girls an actual book of spells titled How To Be a Groovy Witch. There’s glee in seeing the powerless granted some well-deserved payback, but Hendrix never forgets his sweet spot, lacing the story with body horror and unspeakable cruelties that threaten to overwhelm every little victory. In truth, it’s not the paranormal elements that make this blast from the past so terrifying—although one character evolves into a suitably scary antagonist near the end—but the unspeakable, everyday atrocities leveled at children like these. As the girls lose their babies one by one, they soon devote themselves to secreting away Holly and her child. They get some help late in the game but for the most part they’re on their own, trapped between forces of darkness and society’s merciless judgement.

A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.

Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025

ISBN: 9780593548981

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Berkley

Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024

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TELL ME WHAT YOU DID

Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.

A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.

Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?

Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.

Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025

ISBN: 9781464226229

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Poisoned Pen

Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024

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