Friday Finds

What great books did you hear about/discover this past week (and add to your TBR lists)? Share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

My Finds:

Song of Kali; by Dan Simmons
"O terrible wife of Siva / Your tongue is drinking the blood, / O dark Mother! O unclad Mother." It is remarkable that prior to writing this first novel, Dan Simmons had spent only two and a half days in Calcutta, a city "too wicked to be suffered," his narrator says. Fortunately back in print after several years during which it was hard to obtain, this rich, bizarre novel practically reeks with atmosphere. The story concerns an American poet who travels with his Indian wife and their baby to Calcutta to pick up an epic poem cycle about the goddess Kali. The Bengali poet who wrote the poem cycle has disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Horror critic Edward Bryant calls Song of Kali "an exactingly constructed, brutal, and uncompromising study of the degree to which an evil place may permeate and steep all that makes us human" and writes that it embodies "the stance of a psychologically violent novel about a violent society as a defensible and indisputably moral work of art." Song of Kali won a World Fantasy Award. --Fiona Webster

Gecko; by Jack Priest
Jim Monday’s wife Julia left him for Bernd Kohler, a slick doctor from East Germany and Jim, still in love with her, has agreed to give her half his money and half his business, but that’s not enough for Kohler, he wants it all.

Jim and his best friend attorney David Askew are crossing Second Street in Belmont Shore, the fashionable place to live in Long Beach, California, to meet with Julia and her lawyer to sign the papers, giving her what she wants, when a speeding car comes out of nowhere, bearing down on them. A mysterious voice tells Jim to jump back, he does, but David is struck by the hit and run driver and is killed.

Kohler, who had been watching from a second story window, is on the spot in an instant, proclaiming that he’s a doctor and, when he offers his help, Jim attacks him and is arrested. The police handcuff him, toss him in the back of a police cruiser and are transporting him to jail, when someone shoots at the car and now Jim knows that the hit and run that killed his friend was no accident. Someone is trying to kill him and Jim has a pretty good idea who.

Jim is languishing in a holding cell, when the mysterious voice comes back. At first he thinks he may be going crazy, but after a bit he realizes that a Maori woman named Donna Tuhiwai, held in captivity half a world away in New Zealand, is somehow communicating with him. Somehow she’s in his head, sees what he sees, feels what he feels.

But before he gets a chance to adjust to this new and unsettling development, two men, who claim to be attorneys hired by Kohler, show up outside his cell, supposedly to bail him out, but once alone in an interrogation room in the police station, Jim recognizes (through Donna the voice in his head) that one of them is the driver of the Buick that killed his friend. Jim reacts, using the element of surprise, kills them, escapes and now he’s wanted for murder.

Jim knows in his gut that Kohler is the one behind the attempts on his life. The doctor wants him dead before he divorces Julia, so that all his money will be hers before she marries him. Jim is determined to get even and to save Julia from the evil doctor, who has taken Julia to his fortress home in Northern California. And if that isn’t isn’t enough on his plate, Donna, that voice in his head, tells him that she’s afraid her captor is going to kill her. So, Jim not only has to save his wife, but he has to get on a plane as soon as possible, get to New Zealand and rescue Donna, but he’s afraid of flying.

Then there’s the Gecko beast, a creature come to life right out of Maori folklore. It’s deadly, controlled by Kohler and on Jim’s trail.

Afraid; by Jack Kilborn
ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK? YOU WILL BE . . .


Welcome to Safe Haven, Wisconsin. Miles from everything, with one road in and out, this peaceful town has never needed a full-time police force. Until now . . .


A helicopter has crashed near Safe Haven and unleashed something horrifying. Now this merciless force is about to do what it does best. Isolate. Terrorize. Annihilate. As residents begin dying in a storm of gory violence, Safe Haven's only chance for survival will rest with an aging county sheriff, a firefighter, and a single mom. And each will have this harrowing thought: Maybe death hasn't come to their town by accident . . .

Afraid; by Nate Kenyon
Starred Review. Kenyon (Bloodstone) shifts smoothly between '80s-style supernatural horror and modern-day science thriller in this superb sophomore effort. Sarah Voorsanger's birth was so explosive that the hospital burned down. Her grandparents attempted to raise her, but after several episodes of psychokinesis, they decided she was the Antichrist and turned her over to the state. Now 10 years old, Sarah is virtually imprisoned in a Boston institution, where agents of Helix Pharmaceuticals experiment on her with drugs designed to activate psychic abilities. When psychology grad student Jess Chambers bonds with Sarah, first outraged by her condition and then shocked by her extraordinary paranormal talents, she knows she must rescue the child from Helix before the company awakens her most deadly powers. Readers, left breathless, will hope Kenyon makes good on hints of a sequel. (Dec.)
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