It’s difficult to imagine anything more traumatic than a child’s death. But when the deceased child is a twin, the living sibling can be a constant reminder of what’s lost.

That’s the case for Sarah Moorcroft, whose twin daughters were so perfectly identical that Sarah and her husband Angus relied on the girls’ word and personalities to determine who was who. Lydia and Kirstie were born on the coldest day of the year, earning them the nickname “the ice twins,” which was borne out by their blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin.

After Lydia dies in a fall, each family member’s sorrow reveals itself in different ways. Angus gets into a work argument that leaves him unemployed with a London-sized mortgage. Sarah struggles to get along with her husband and find work of her own. Most disturbingly, Kirstie begins claiming that she’s actually Lydia, and that Kirstie is the twin who died.

The family seeks a new start—and a less expensive lifestyle—on a Scottish island Angus inherited. Sarah is determined to put their lives back together as they live in and restore a squalid, barely inhabitable lighthouse, the island’s only structure. And if that means learning that the couple buried the wrong twin, well, Sarah is convinced they can move forward. 

In The Ice Twins, S.K. Tremayne depicts a family as isolated as the tiny isle they call home. Sarah, Angus and Kirstie (or is it Lydia?) have separated themselves from one another and their normal lives. They’re left metaphorically circling one another warily, trying to deduce what’s going on inside. 

As the Moorcrofts aim to unravel what, exactly, happened when one twin died, readers are given glimpses into each character’s thoughts. The resulting tale, written by a best-selling author under a pseudonym, peels back one layer at a time in a fast-paced, thrilling race to understanding.

This article was originally published in the June 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

There seems to be no reason behind the string of teen suicides in the rural English village of Radcote. A young man dies in a strange motorcycle accident, quickly followed by the death of another boy. But were these really suicides, or were they murders? Perhaps these unexplained teen deaths are connected to the cluster of apparent suicides that occurred in the same community two years ago.

In her new psychological thriller, What You Left Behind, author Samantha Hayes creates a town where suspicion and grief have settled on the community like a cloud that won’t disperse. She effectively conveys a sense of creepy urgency in her cast of odd characters that includes Gil, a young man with undisclosed “issues” who’s given to peeking in windows; the mousy Sophia, who manages the homeless shelter in town and whose son was counted among the earlier suicide victims; and Frank, a menacing, rank-smelling regular in town and at the shelter.

Detective Inspector Lorraine Fisher arrives in Radcote for a vacation week with her sister, Jo. She arrives with her daughter, Stella, driving down “Devil’s Mile,” the road to her sister’s house, where flowers mark the site of the recent motorcycle tragedy. Fisher can’t help getting involved: Her creds as a cop make her hyper-aware of the strange circumstances that surround the so-called suicides, and her attention increases after her preteen daughter visits a local estate and horse farm and encounters Gil.

Meanwhile Jo worries about her 18-year-old son, Freddie, who suddenly loses interest in school and begins to disappear into his room for hours at a time. What’s happening to Freddie is key: He’s afraid to tell his family that frightening email messages on his laptop are delivering insinuations, demands and terrors that won’t go away. Sure, he thinks, “He could leave home, struggle to establish a new life somewhere. But one thing was for certain: wherever he went, cyberspace would go with him.”

Hayes knows how to ratchet up the suspense and the questions, including who’s behind the scary events—and why? She subtly magnifies the sense of foreboding that pervades both characters and setting. And this just may be one of those spine-chillers where not all of the loose ends will get tidied away.

BookPage Fiction Top Pick, May 2015

It’s a regular day in New York City. The subways are running, people are getting coffee and listening to headphones and going about their business. Then, in one seemingly isolated incident, a woman with blonde hair lashes out and kills without reason. As it turns out, the incident is not isolated at all.

In Emily Schultz’s third novel, The Blondes, the world succumbs to a mysterious, rabies-like pandemic that causes people to attack and kill at random. But it’s not everyone who is affected by the disease: It’s women. And not all women, but blonde women—both those who’ve colored their hair and those who were born blonde. Suddenly, the preferred hair hue for starlets, beach babes and Barbie dolls is dangerous and nearly forbidden. Women shave, color and cover their hair to try to stem the disease’s spread.

In the midst of these events, our main character, Hazel Hayes, tries to cope with a breakup and a pregnancy. She wants to get out of New York and go home to Canada, but the world is suspicious of women, and she faces literal attacks (from “Blonde Fury” victims), plus discrimination and paranoia.

Clearly, The Blondes touches on themes of gender identity and politics, broaching topics of adultery, pregnancy, abortion, gender studies, myths about female hysteria, menstruation prejudices and female portrayal in media. But the book delves deeper than hot-button issues and talking points to explore what happens when women turn against other women, what we do when we feel out of control and the choice of whether to stand aside when someone needs help or to hold out a hand.

Schultz handles all these themes masterfully, and that alone is impressive, but what really makes the novel great isn’t the gender politics—it’s the story. Hazel’s journey is outwardly terrifying and inwardly harrowing at the same time, creating a narrative we want to follow and a character we truly care about.
The Blondes is the book you can’t put down; it’s also the book you can’t stop thinking about after you do.

This article was originally published in the May 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The mood, hustle, power and immense growing pains of today’s China bleed through Jan-Philipp Sendker’s superlative suspense novel, Whispering Shadows, which delves into the explosion of big business following China’s Cultural Revolution. The juggernaut of change reaches from high places to the mean streets and local officials of Shenzhen, southern China’s economic hub, where burgeoning growth, financial windfalls and corruption are often out of control. German-born author Sendker served as an Asian correspondent for Stern news magazine for nearly five years and writes with a wealth of knowledge about all things China.

Three years after the death of his young son to leukemia, former journalist Paul Leibovitz is still trying to hang onto the past so his memory of Justin will never fade. After living nearly 30 years in Hong Kong, the expat American is now holed up on an outlying island, limiting his trips to the mainland, hoping that nothing in his daily life will erase Justin’s image from his troubled mind. The boy’s raincoat and yellow boots still hang near the door, and Paul is permanently estranged from his wife, who couldn’t persuade him that life must go on.

Paul painfully discovers that he is unable to ward off the changes that time brings like a pebble breaking the surface of a pond. On one of his infrequent trips off-island, Paul is thrown into contact with an American couple whose adult son, Michael Owen, has gone missing and is soon found murdered. Paul and his longtime close friend, Detective Zhang, are drawn into the search for his killer.

Owen, an enterprising and rich entrepreneur with far-reaching family business interests in China, was closely enmeshed with Victor Tang, a businessman of immense wealth and influence who operates at the center of Shenzhen’s grab for a uniquely Chinese version of capitalism. Paul and Zhang walk a knife’s edge of danger as they begin to investigate these titans of corporate power.

The finely tuned Whispering Shadows, the first book in a planned trilogy, reveals each character’s back story, from Owen’s parents to Paul’s troubled lover, Christine; from Zhang’s violent past to the hubris of the ambitious, implacable Tang. Each story is expertly woven into the whole cloth of this chilling book.

While away on duty, Army Ranger Van Shaw receives a chilling note from his grandfather: “Come home, if you can.” The last time the two talked was 10 years ago—a conversation that resulted in a bloody brawl. Pride and stubbornness run strong in this family, so for the old man to reach out means there’s something big happening back home.

Van had prepared himself for the estranged exchange waiting for him, but not for what he finds: his grandfather with a gunshot wound to the head, bleeding out on the floor. As the first person on the scene and in light of their complicated relationship, Van knows he’s suspect number one. To clear his name and obtain retribution, Van must return to his illicit past as a kid criminal and exploit his grandfather’s exceptional career as a professional thief. With the cops questioning his every move, Van takes to the streets to seek answers from his grandfather’s cronies. But this is not without a price—Van has worked his way up the army ranks, and one wrong move could cost him his status or his life.

Glen Erik Hamilton’s impressive debut novel fuses procedural plotting, vigilantism and noir. The seedy setting and one man’s hunt for justice create an emotionally stirring and morally ambiguous read. Past Crimes keeps readers on edge and second-guessing every character, and when that last page is turned, one question remains: Will Van return to the life he labored so hard to forget? It will have to be answered in the much-anticipated second installment in this clever, intoxicating series.