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HIGH DESERT HIGH

A sublimely unusual tale of a man’s dementia or, perhaps, his awakening.

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A newly retired NYPD cop moves to the California desert and experiences culture shock—with hippies and UFO sightings that may be driving him crazy—in this mystery.

While he’s off duty, Lt. Paul Santo’s meal is interrupted by protesters demanding restaurant diners stand in objection to racist police. Paul’s clash with one demonstrator gets him in trouble, but rather than take a one-day suspension, he opts for retirement, already fed up with a public that designates cops as the bad guys. He soon has the chance to reconnect with his 21-year-old daughter, Tracy, who’s been estranged since Paul’s alcoholic, drug-abusing wife, Marcy, left him years ago. Tracy wants to start a new life on the West Coast. Paul joins her, and while Tracy stays with her friend Heidi, he seeks adventure at the Joshua Tree National Park. There he meets Kate at the Joshua Tree Inn’s front desk and later encounters a band of hippies who regularly dabble in drugs and UFO gazing. One night, Paul himself spots an unexplained spacecraft on the road, precipitating a vehicular accident. He’s certain someone in the group slipped him a Mickey (like, say, LSD); otherwise, there’s a very good chance he’s losing his mind. Though Schindler’s (The Last Sewer Ball, 2013, etc.) offbeat novel ultimately delves into the mystery of Paul’s mental state, it builds on a sturdy foundation of lonely cop–turned–family man. Paul’s torn between giving Tracy space and ingratiating himself into her life; Tracy wants to tell her father the true nature of her relationship with Heidi and her surprise career plans. It’s a worthy precursor to the latter half, which is effectively blanketed in ambiguity. Even Kate, for example, is suspect (maybe she drugged Paul’s tea), and many things could be the reason he sees the craft and other peculiarities, from stress to the desert heat. The prose, meanwhile, spices up the narrative without subverting Paul’s predicament: “As he coffee’ed up, his brain was spinning, churning, digging for solutions.”

A sublimely unusual tale of a man’s dementia or, perhaps, his awakening.

Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-9662408-0-1

Page Count: 303

Publisher: The Elevated Press

Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2017

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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 TESTAMENTS

Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.

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Atwood goes back to Gilead.

The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.

Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Nan A. Talese

Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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