The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson © 2015 William Morrow Striking redhead, Lily Kintner is a university archivist with a sordid, secret past. Lily is something of a criminal mastermind, having gotten away with two murders. In Heathrow Airport, Lily strikes up a conversation with traveling businessman, Ted Severson, who met Lily through his…

Sweetland by Michael Crummey © 2014 Liveright Moses Sweetland is the last holdout in a public condemnation of the small Newfoundland island of Sweetland. Nobody will get their money until “Mose” settles with the government. The hard-headed bastard eventually settles to get his neighbors off his back and then goes and drowns in a fishing…

Miracle Man by William Leibowitz © 2015 Manifesto Bobby Austin has the highest IQ ever measured. The four-year-old also has terrible nightmares and goes into trances for long periods of time. His adoptive parents relinquish him to a special school for young geniuses, where he achieves multiple PhDs by age 16. The deaths of Bobby’s…

Radioland by Matt McHugh © 2011 Amazon Digital Family man, Stephen, becomes addicted to a mind radio device that allows one to tune in on emotions experienced by others and thereby achieve an emotional rush. The addiction causes Stephen to become emotionally distant from his wife and his son, Steven, Jr., and the addiction ramps…

At The Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft Had read lots of Lovecraft, but not this particular one. Scientific teams from Miskatonic University explore colossal mountains in Antarctica and discover the remains of an Archaean city and the bizarre creatures who built it. The thing that destroyed the ancient, sublimely intelligent race might still be…

The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell © 2015 Simon & Schuster This book was ten years in the making. They should have spent another ten minutes on the title, because the story has nothing to do with the fifth gospel of Tatian. Oh, it’s mentioned, but the story hinges on the already-biblical Gospel of John.…

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay © 2015 William Morrow Eight-year-old Meredith (Merry) Barrett’s big sister, Marjorie, is possessed by the devil. That’s what the Barrett family and the crew of the reality TV show, The Possession would like the public to believe. Are the Barrett’s just cashing in on Marjorie’s schizophrenia by…

Sins of Our Fathers by Shawn Lawrence Otto © 2014 Milkweed The rather obviously named John White (JW) is a bank president in a town near an Indian Reservation in Minnesota. JW is also a deeply indebted gambling addict who is losing his family and career. He ends up living in a trailer on the…

Soil by Jamie Kornegay © 2015 Simon & Schuster Jay Mize’s experimental farm is a disaster. Nothing will grow, and Jay’s wife has left him. A flood destroys what little remains, and then Jay discovers a dead body on his property left by floodwater. Jay is paranoid and reclusive, so rather than report the body…

A Love Like Blood by Marcus Sedgwick © 2014 Pegasus Serving in Paris near the end of World War II, medical officer and hematologist, Charles Jackson sees a vampire feeding in an abandoned Nazi bunker. Too frightened and/or unsure of what he saw to intervene, Jackson walks away to be haunted by thoughts of the…