Quick Book Reviews Blog

  Short Summary Riley Sager (pen name used by Todd Ritter ) has been pumping out one sensational mystery thriller after the next, and his latest one, titled The Only One Left , captured my attention with its curious premise. The story follows Kit McDeere, a home-health aide who takes a job working for a stroke-scarred seventy-year-old woman with an infamous past. One night, the woman makes Kit an offer: she promises to tell her everything about the strange and sensational murder case which happened over fifty years ago, the one she was at the very centre of as the prime suspect.

  Short Summary Steve Alten certainly has a fascination with the sea and all the creatures lurking beneath it, at least, if his MEG series is anything to go by. Diving into a horror seldom-explored, the first book, simply titled MEG , introduces us to Dr. Jonas Taylor, obsessed with finding a long-lost remnant of a prehistoric shark species thought extinct. However, his search for the seventy-foot long predator has some truly disastrous and unintended consequences.

Short Summary Scott Carson doesn't seem like he will run short of ideas for his horror novels anytime soon, with his most recent one, Where They Wait , mixing together modern technology and ghost stories. The plot follows a journalist who begins using an app for guided meditations, which includes a sad and disturbing ballad sung by a woman with a hauntingly beautiful voice. Though it is followed by a rejuvenating sleep, it also marks the beginning of nightmares, the star of which is a dead woman.

  Catriona Ward injected some much needed fresh blood into the horror genre with her recent publication of The Last House on Needless Street . It tells the strange and somewhat surreal story of a man living with his daughter and cat in a run-down house... a man whose new neighbour suspects him of being a serial killer, responsible for the disappearance of a young girl despite supposedly having an alibi.

T. Kingfisher (pen name of Ursula Vernon) has been quietly working her way to the front lines of the horror genre, with her most recent effort being The Hollow Places .  Introducing us to a young woman named Kara, the story then thrusts her into a world-shattering scenario when she discovers a hidden bunker with portals to alternate realities behind a wall in her uncle's house. However, those realities might also carry invaders keen on crossing over into our own world.

Robert Masello has never shied away from using the immense potential of his imagination to mix fact and fiction, two realms he is intimately familiar with. In The Night Crossing , he does precisely that as he brings to us a fictionalized telling of Bram Stoker's life, expanding on the man far beyond his immortal novel. A frustrated writer, he becomes drawn into a web of intrigue surrounding a safe haven founded by the wealthy elite, harbouring a dark and terrible secret, an ancient evil Stoker must confront lest thousands of lives are lost forever.

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child combine forces once again to create City of Endless Night . In this investigative mystery we embark on a hunt for a serial killer whose first strike was directed at the reckless daughter of a wealthy tech billionaire. Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta is on the case, but little does he suspect, this is the one case which will push him over the edge and have him face a foe with much more profound motivations than he could suspect.

Israel Finn has won the 80th Annual Writer's Digest Short Story Competition with his collection titled Dreaming At the Top of My Lungs , containing within twelve dark short stories. Ranging from a woman being on trial in a world where telling the truth is a crime to a man who finds himself in a surreal nightmare after losing his son, these stories aim to prod the human soul from all possible directions and take us on a journey in the profound recesses of human nature.

Whether you exclusively believe in the tangible and observable or allow for the existence of anything that cannot be disproved, there is a skeptic hiding within you, no matter if he's big or small... and that's perfectly normal. Skepticism is actually a handy survival tool in a world where there are more than enough shady characters trying to lie and deceive you. Of course, like most things in life, it's only beneficial when practiced with a certain moderation, and in The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp, we get to witness what happens when it's taken to the greatest extreme possible.

To start with a little disclaimer of sorts, this is the third book in a trilogy, and if you haven't read the previous ones, The Passage and The Twelve , then chances are you wont understand much or enjoy this novel nearly as much as you could. In other words, reading the other two books before this one is a bit of a necessity. Two books ago Justin Cronin started a vast, sprawling and epic trilogy called The Passage , telling the story of a few human survivors in the wake of a viral apocalypse, one that turned countless people into mindless killer vampire-like creatures.

Humanity will most certainly one day be wiped out from existence, and whether that takes thousands, millions or billions of years isn't really all that relevant in the large scheme of things, at least when compared to the rest of the universe. It's a topic that has fuelled the imaginations of authors for centuries upon centuries as they imagined all the possible ways things could come to an end.

The horror genre is one that definitely sees its fair share of innovation attempts, with every author dreaming of being able to instill in the reader the kind of cold and gripping fear very few writers are capable of producing. Clive Barker is today known as perhaps one of the most acclaimed icons in horror literature, walking right alongside giants such as Stephen King himself.

As strange as it may be, it feels as if books are perhaps one of the few constants which we take for granted in our universe; once something is written on a page, it stays the same forevermore. Though virtually every book review can be different, they are all going to be discussing the same, never-changing subject, the words on the page.

In recent years it seems that with his fans, Stephen King has been delivering largely hit or miss literature, at least if his book reviews are to be trusted. Fortunately, it seems that he managed to find his footing with his more recent works, and in my opinion Revival is certainly a grand step in the proper direction.

The influence H. P. Lovecraft had on the world of literature, art, music and other kinds of media is rather hard to overstate; countless have inspired themselves from his timeless and horrifying works generally centered around unstoppable and indescribable t errors lurking beneath this world , generally leading his characters into madness, leaving them to a fate worse than death. It is rather hard to choose one single work as being the quintessential one which should be read by all, which is why Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H.P. Lovecraft was put together.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the horror genre is the fact that so many different approaches to it can be taken, ranging from convoluted and ridiculous to simple and realistic ones; there will never be a shortage of things to fear in this world. It goes without saying that Stephen King is deservedly one of the best-known horror writers out there, and with Mr. Mercedes he seeks to impregnate his audience with fear stemming from incomprehensible madness.

Joe Hill smashed into the world of literature as a missile would, gaining tremendous amounts of popularity for his rather original horror novel, Heart-Shaped Box . With Horns , Joe Hill returns to us with yet another original premise, though admittedly it is far less dark than the previous one. In any case, Horns tells the story of a young man named Ignatius who, upon waking up after a night of hard drinking, makes a startling realization: rather big horns seem to have grown on his head overnight. At first, they feel like nothing but a burden as their unsightliness doesn’t really do Ignatius any favors.

Though Stephen King may have gone through somewhat of a slump recently, it seems he has returned to his original form in his last couple of novels, and in his latest one, Doctor Sleep , he goes back to his glory days when he wrote The Shining . What does that mean? Well, this time around we follow Dan from the original story, but he has grown into an adult, one who cannot leave his dark past behind. In an attempt to start over, he chooses to settle in a small New Hampshire community, where he uses his shining power to give comfort to the dying.

Time travelling is a very complex concept to grasp, especially considering that the debate rages on as to whether or not it would actually be possible in the real world. For this reason, whenever you read a book or see a movie that deals with the subject, it is best to simply suspend your sense of disbelief, forget about all the apparent paradoxes, and enjoy the show.  This is the approach you ought to take with The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, for it deals with a time-traveling killer hell-bent on snuffing out the lives of the “shining girls”, very bright women with unlimited potential.

Joe Hill is known by some as being one of the best contemporary horror authors, especially when they have supernatural elements to them. In NOS4A2 , Joe Hill tells us a story centered around three characters: Charles Manx, Victoria McQueen, and her son. Charles is a somewhat special person who likes to take children aboard his 1938 Rolls-Royce and take them to a downright horrifying amusement park called Christmasland, after which they are never heard from again.