A spirited cast of heroes elevates this gore-soaked, monster-laden tale.
Estranged brothers reunite to battle sadistic otherworldly creatures invading their hometown in Chamberlin’s debut horror novel.
At first glance, Haven Shire seems like a harmless, secluded community. But local police officer George Thatch has seen his share of violence, and the “tingle” he feels when imminent danger nears is abuzz. Horrifying beings from a parallel world have been creeping into the humans’ realm; one Haven Shire family may be ushering the monsters in. George’s younger brother, Phineas, is in Kansas City, offering his spiritual and psychic abilities with such services as exorcising apparitions. When he gets a vision telling him to come home, he and his colleagues, armed with guns and relics, make tracks for Haven Shire, the town Phineas left years ago. They join forces with George and his fellow cops in combating the relentless “Formoria.” These creatures, which steal human bodies, eat brains, and often come in the form of colossal insects, are merciless—though certain sinister humans may be even more of a threat. Chamberlin outfits this story with a dynamic cast. The brothers have an intriguing backstory; their late mother’s psychic visions were diagnosed as schizophrenic delusions. The female characters are also strong, including the half-Cherokee cop Sicily Manns and Mata, Phineas’ nonverbal deaf best friend and work partner, who communicates via sign language. The novel teems with violent imagery—brutal, gory deaths coupled with all manners of cruelty. While the story opens with a spine-chilling, nightmare-inducing sequence, the latter half favors action over suspense as the heroes fight monsters with bullets and homemade bombs. (The supernatural elements remain strong as magic and evoked curses prove to be equally formidable weapons.) The author deftly turns familiar sights into memorable ghastly ones, taking cues from religion, mythology, and Lovecraft to depict masses of tentacles, giant spidery legs, and “shark-like teeth.”
A spirited cast of heroes elevates this gore-soaked, monster-laden tale.Pub Date: July 17, 2023
ISBN: 9798852659309
Page Count: 401
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.
An author is targeted by a fan who just can’t let her go.
Arden Bowie has had plenty of tragedy in her life, but now she’s finally on top. After her parents died when she was a teenager, she moved from Brooklyn to Ohio to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousins. She soon became part of their loving family and grew up to become a writer and bookseller. When her debut novel is published, she meets Dustin Dubecki at her first event. He showers her with praise, asks for writing advice, and wants to take her out for coffee. Arden tells herself he’s just a little awkward, but then he keeps showing up at her local events—and, even stranger, she’s sure she sees him lurking at her event in New York City. When he bursts into her apartment one night and assaults her, Arden’s calm life is shattered. Dustin gets a five-year sentence at a psychiatric facility; Arden spends most of that time rebuilding her sense of stability. Eventually, she moves to Oregon to start a new life where Dustin can never find her. But even though she has a beautiful home, a thriving career, a doting family, new friends, and even a potential love interest in a former cop named Gideon Riley, Arden can’t escape Dustin’s rage when his sentence is finally up. Roberts toggles between Arden’s point of view and Dustin’s, giving the reader occasional glimpses into his extremely twisted mindset. Although Arden’s attempts to escape Dustin are engrossing, the story stalls in the middle when far too many pages are dedicated to Arden purchasing and decorating a house. But the excitement picks back up when Dustin, a truly odious villain, re-enters the story. It’s also satisfying to see Arden grow into someone who refuses to be a victim, even as she deals with horrifying circumstances.
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781250413581
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
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.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
