This undead tale would have benefited from more blood in its veins, but it still has a pulse.
A vampire couple’s dream of domestic bliss is upended by murder, suggesting that being undead isn’t nearly as dangerous as being different.
Putting a new spin on long-term relationship goals, vampires Arthur Miller (no, not that one) and Salvatore Conte are ready to retire from centuries of chaos and settle into a quiet life as innkeepers in Trident Falls, Oregon. The bed and breakfast they’ve acquired, the Iris Inn, isn’t exactly booming, but Salvatore is sure that will all change when the town gets a sense of his refined taste and style. Maybe their latest guest, new city manager Nora Anderson, will provide a chance to turn the whole thing around. After all, in a little town like Trident Falls, word of mouth is everything, so the potential for an audience with the mayor could make their business boom. But Arthur and Salvatore’s dreams of quiet domesticity and financial success are buried when the mayor’s found dead—right in their begonias—with two suspicious puncture wounds in his neck. The town’s sheriff, an unemployed actor with a chip on his shoulder, threatens to call the Federal Paranormal Investigators if Arthur and Salvatore can’t find a more likely culprit. The duo scramble to prove their innocence, aided by an eclectic supporting cast: a latte-slinging werewolf, an elven coroner, and an eerily calm Nora, all of whom join Arthur and Salvatore on a journey through the political undertones of otherness, hoping for a happy ending.
This undead tale would have benefited from more blood in its veins, but it still has a pulse.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780593952719
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
For readers who like their fun laced with skin-crawling weirdness.
A comic-strip artist loses first her cat and then, possibly, her mind.
Working with artists Horner and Staehle, as he did for Hidden Pictures (2022), Rekulak uses illustrations to support a paranormal thriller plot. Penny Padgett, a 27-year-old cartoonist living in Philadelphia, has published three beloved graphic novels about her life with her cat, Popcorn, and is working on a fourth when Popcorn darts out the window during a snowstorm and disappears. When all efforts to locate him fail, Penny spirals into unproductive despair. Her live-in boyfriend, Dean Everhardt, who works in finance, insists she accompany him to a cocktail party at the Brandywine Valley estate of his most important client, Evelyn Bruehl. At the party, Penny hears mewing that at first she’s sure must be Popcorn, but which turns out to be a very different cat named Godfrey. Godfrey immediately attaches himself to Penny, and when Evelyn—who’s about to take an extended trip to Europe—asks her to cat-sit, Dean pressures her to agree. Though at first Godfrey’s presence helps Penny break through her writer’s block, she’s completely disgusted by his custom-made food, which is delivered by his equally repugnant private veterinarian. And then something very strange starts happening to her artwork, which is suddenly filled with macabre and demonic imagery she can’t remember producing. Also, she’s losing weight and something terrible is happening to her skin. At this point the plot pivots into full-on horror, with a disgusting infestation of giant beetles and revolting odors taking over Penny’s house and a horrific murder next door. Penny finds some clues about what’s happening in a biography of Evelyn Bruehl’s grandfather, illustrator Barnabas Godfrey—the cat’s namesake. The 80-plus pages of illustrations include both Penny’s comic panels and Barnabas’ 19th-century images, the latter also filled with hints of what will emerge in the dramatic, screamworthy climax.
For readers who like their fun laced with skin-crawling weirdness.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781250895875
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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