A treat for readers interested in travel, romance, and murder; join the club.
An exclusive international adventurers’ club becomes connected to the ultimate misadventure: murder.
In this second installment of Lamberson’s adventure series, American Stuart Mancini inherits from his grandfather a prestigious London flat and membership in the Kilimanjaro Club, a group that “valued fine food and drink as much as the camaraderie that came from death-defying exploration and discovery.” When Stuart goes to London in 2000 to survey his new property with his Italian girlfriend, Prima Valdocci, club member Bailey Honeybourne begs him to help locate Parnell Sumner. Parnell, a fellow club member, was apparently kidnapped in China while on a tiger-hunting expedition. Both “old goats,” Bailey and Parnell were dear friends of Stuart’s grandfather, so the protagonist feels obligated to help. He accompanies Bailey to the rugged mountains of China. There, the pair’s plans are initially waylaid when guides are found murdered. Traveling in the same area is ruthless Colorado businessman Hilliard Yates, who’s hoping to close a deal to market a male sex-enhancement drug made from tiger genitals. On Yates’ tail is Sprocket, an experienced killer with a two-inch mohawk, yellow contact lenses, and body-modification titanium bolts screwed into his skull. Sprocket botched a hit in Houston that Yates hired him to do, so now the killer wants to murder the businessman before he can retaliate for the failure. This well-written book provides plenty of unusual characters (yes, Sprocket is the standout) and multiple storylines, each offering escalating excitement. Mixed in with adventure and murder is the love affair of 40-somethings Prima and Stuart. Descriptions of China, Italy, England, Texas, and Colorado are travel guide–perfect. References to sounds are strong, such as “the hee-haw of Carabinieri sirens” and “the blur of rustling leaves and branches, stones and matter crunching beneath their boots.” Conversations and friendships are believable, but that’s not to suggest that no implausible things transpire. Though the novel can work as a stand-alone, it would be best to read the series in order as some references from the first book are not fully explained initially.
A treat for readers interested in travel, romance, and murder; join the club.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 979-8-9852013-0-7
Page Count: 474
Publisher: Hydra Heads Press
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.
Could making a movie about the disappearance of five women from an island reawaken an evil presence there?
Five dresses hang from the topmost limbs of an oak on a remote island in a Vermont lake. That memorable image marks a mystery from a century ago, when five women believed to have been part of a commune vanished forever. As this novel opens, another group gathers on the island to make a movie based on that tale. Marin Keane, the narrator, is surprised but thrilled to find herself cast as one of the leads; she’s a struggling actor whose biggest part so far has been “Bridesmaid with Eczema” in a drug commercial, so playing Daisy Rue, whose haunting diary is the basis for the movie’s script, could be a career-making move. Ronan Peters, the writer-director, is talented and, Marin notes, hot. His reason for gathering the cast on the island is a kind of boot-camp rehearsal: They’ll spend a week living there, wearing period clothes, and managing without internet or phone service. Oh, and holding séances. What could go wrong? Marin quickly meets the other women in the cast: regal character actor Julianne Brown, cool and competent Heather Benchley, bratty former Disney star Susie Hutchinson, and, striking awe in all of them, Violet Wright, a much-awarded Meryl Streep-ish figure who will play the woman who brought the others to the island, which she owned. They get to work, but soon enough someone disappears. The book’s plot, like the movie’s script, largely follows Daisy’s journal, and since the reader is supplied with pages-long sections of that journal, there’s not much suspense about what will happen next. There are some effective set pieces, such as the group’s first séance. But in its last quarter, the plot collapses into a muddle of #MeToo vengeance, improbable secrets, and jarring character reveals that is, as Marin says, “the most Scooby-Doo thing I’ve ever heard.”
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798217044092
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
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
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