A uniquely dark and chilling ride.
In Sanders Brooks’ thriller, a mysterious murder sparks the revival of the death portraiture industry in LA.
Poor Karen Elmes is already dead when readers meet Viv Klein, a down-on-her-luck photographer who is skewered on social media for snapping the deceased woman’s photograph after stumbling upon her body in a forlorn back alley. Abby Katz is an intrepid reporter dispatched by the LA Times to profile the hard-pressed young photographer. Just what makes her tick? And why did she do what she did? Though conflicted about her actions in the back alley, Viv nevertheless decides that a weird job offer to photograph a wealthy man’s recently deceased mother is just too lucrative to pass up. After all, she’s told, death masks go back to King Tut’s time and even became a proto-social media phenomenon in the 19th century when good folks felt that using the novel invention of photography was a great way to preserve their dearly departed loved ones at the moment of death. (“The Victorians got all creepy about it when photography became more affordable, and they would take death portraits of their children staged with their families. Disturbing, I know.”) The creep factor is, indeed, off the charts (the proceedings are chilling long before additional bodies start hitting the floor), but Sanders Brooks’ steady and clear-eyed approach to the ghastly photo shoots makes them seem entirely plausible. The author keeps her energetic narrative tightly focused on the lead characters, along with a few other supporting players, in a continuously revolving POV storytelling arc that manages to evoke both intimacy and urgency throughout. As the dark but familiar world Viv and Abby inhabit grows increasingly perilous, the danger feels uncomfortably palpable. Brooks explores heavy questions about the morality of social media with a light, mordant touch. Narrative shifts to a detached Discord chat between true-crime enthusiasts trying to puzzle out what’s going on and news accounts about the diabolical deeds allow readers to zoom out and get their bearings before being plunged back down the claustrophobic LA streets where Viv plies her stock in trade.
A uniquely dark and chilling ride.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9798218589639
Page Count: 244
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A haunting, timeless exploration of the evil men do—and the imprint it leaves behind.
A middle-aged woman channels her best Miss Marple when she finds herself facing a nightmare from her past as she seeks to make sense of her present.
Jane Trevally is at a crossroads of sorts. After a traumatic childhood, she sought safety and solace in marriages with wealthy men. Now twice divorced and living with her four dogs in the crumbling English country mansion that is her birthright, she’s feeling the need to do something, to take a job, when one day a runaway dog turns up on her doorstep. The dog is chipped, and with the help of a local vet and her loyal stepson, Dexter Lombardi, Jane traces the dog’s home to the edge of Hampstead Heath, in London—a place that brings back the memory of a terrifying night from her youth, when a handsome man picked her up and took her back to this very house. Everything there felt wrong; she just managed to escape, certain that if she had stayed, she would have died that night. Now, soon after knocking on the door and returning the dog, she discovers that he had run away from an Airbnb near her house, where he had been staying with a young woman who seems to have disappeared. With the help of Dexter; his father, Tony, her second ex-husband; Tony’s former security enforcer, Tobias Wilson; and her own gift for connecting with people, Jane sets out to find the woman, taking her first steps on the path to becoming a private investigator. While Jane serves as the heart of the novel, Jewell also narrates chapters from several other characters’ points of view, all of which chip away at the horror that is the house on the Heath. By slowly revealing past and present simultaneously, Jewell keeps the mystery fresh as she plays with Gothic tropes and the timeless imagery of “a house of horrors” embodying human sin. She doesn’t flinch from exploring the depths of depravity in this house—and its humans.
A haunting, timeless exploration of the evil men do—and the imprint it leaves behind.Pub Date: June 23, 2026
ISBN: 9781668033906
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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