A well-crafted, goose bump–inducing work of psychological horror.
In Harrison’s latest horror novel, a woman with a history of mental illness is haunted by a crime committed in her new house.
Kathryn Fields has just bought a run-down Victorian town house in Washington, D.C.’s, Georgetown neighborhood in the hopes of fixing it up. Her wealthy mother thinks Kathryn has made a rash decision purchasing the property, which has ties to a 35-year-old murder from 1984. Kathryn, however, hopes the house will anchor her following a psychotic break she experienced several months ago. “The things it must have seen and heard in its hundred plus years,” she thinks on her first night in her new home, “the intrigues and passions that must have seeped into these walls, embalmed beneath successive coats of paint and varnish, recorded in the scars on the flooring, preserved in the smells of its woodwork.” The house contains more than just abstractions, she soon learns; it turns out there’s a secret dressing area with a marble-topped vanity hidden behind the wall of her bedroom. Why would someone do such a thing? Perhaps it has something to do with the antique box Kathryn finds there, containing a torn photograph of a beautiful woman—and a loaded handgun. Soon she’s seeing and hearing things that seem related to the unsolved murder of someone who once lived in the house. But are these things real, or evidence that Kathryn’s psychosis has returned? Harrison is adept at creating a sense of true creepiness, as when Kathryn discovers that someone’s rearranged her possessions and has an unexpected reaction: “All the furniture had been moved. The whole house had been rearranged. And yet as Kathryn stood there stunned and disbelieving, the place looked right. Everything exactly where it should have been in the first place.” Several elements of the story will be familiar to horror fans, since they’re relatively common trappings of the haunted house subgenre. In Harrison’s hands, however, they feel like a fresh homage rather than a rerun. Many readers will find it a perfect book for a spooky late-night read.
A well-crafted, goose bump–inducing work of psychological horror.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781680574234
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Wordfire Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 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.
