A mystery/thriller/coming-of-age story you won't be able to put down till the final revelation.
A young woman faces harsh realities in a thrilling new stand-alone from Hall, author of And Now She’s Gone (2020).
Mickie Lambert, the only child of doting parents, left a job in the communications department at her dad’s accounting firm to work for an exciting new digital scrapbook company. Her latest assignment is compiling a $5,000 memory package for Nadia Denham, who owns a curio shop in a dying mall and has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. When Mickie goes to Beautiful Things to meet Nadia, Nadia gives her a number of her special treasures along with handwritten notes about them. Acquired on flea-market scouting trips, they all belonged to down-on-their-luck women she helped in some way. When Mickie starts getting creepy anonymous notes slipped under the front door of the home she shares with her parents, she fears that her parents are hiding something from her, especially once she realizes they've been locking their bedroom door when they're not home. Back at work, Mickie bonds with Nadia, who’s slowly sinking into dementia, but not with Riley, the protective store manager at Beautiful Things. The more she researches Nadia’s trips, the more she realizes that all the women she helped have either vanished or died. After Nadia herself dies, an apparent suicide, Mickie continues working on her prepaid memory project even as more threatening messages arrive, saying things like "Stop now or Payback is gonna come." Worn down to her last nerve despite the protection of her policeman uncle, she overcomes her scruples and breaks into a locked box she's found in her mother's nightstand, revealing a secret that drives her deeper into a perilous search for the truth.
A mystery/thriller/coming-of-age story you won't be able to put down till the final revelation.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2747-2
Page Count: 427
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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