Striking characters drive this worthwhile batch of unnerving stories.
Everyday people become entangled with unavoidable terrors in Kane’s collection of creepy tales.
The book begins with “Past Is Prologue,” in which Marcus vows to marry Rufina, a slave he’s completely fallen for. But their love blossoms in Herculaneum, the ancient Roman town that readers know Mt. Vesuvius will doom. Many of the 12 stories that follow are plays on familiar figures or horror scenarios. “The Last Bride” takes place in early 17th-century Hungary, where a certain Elizabet Bàthory makes a connection with a mercenary who goes by the name of Dracul. The titular “Suzanne” finds a potential romantic interest in police officer Jericho as the two bond while holed up in a local police station during a zombie apocalypse. The author offers a few selections that stray from more common genre tropes; “Dokkaebi” features a 1400-year-old shapeshifting goblin from Korean mythology. The author builds solid foundations for these tales, from the mood-setting environments (“Before Iraq, he never noticed the various shades of green sported by the aspens, oaks, walnuts, and other leafy trees of West Virginia. Soon the green would change to a blaze of yellows, oranges, and reds”) to the well-drawn casts. The characters include couples in unstable marriages; a ginseng hunter and his estranged surrogate father; and a popular doctor of theology alongside his president-elect son. Kane’s unadorned prose rarely lingers on the violent bits; his straightforward approach occasionally results in tales that, even with monsters in the mix, aren’t so scary. Still, he delivers shocking turns, whether in the form of a surprise ending or a character’s unexpected revelation. Galal’s black-and-white artwork accompanies each story, illustrating such haunting moments as grieving in the falling rain and recalling images from a fuzzy memory.
Striking characters drive this worthwhile batch of unnerving stories.Pub Date: May 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781087963365
Page Count: 280
Publisher: C2 Visionary Press
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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