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Library | Call Number | Format | Status | Item Holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Canton Public Library | FIC VERONA | NEW BOOK LOCAL HOLDS | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Duxbury Free Library | FIC VERONA, EMILY RUTH | BOOK | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Holbrook Public Library | ON ORDER | BOOK | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Weymouth Tufts Library | VERONA | 14 DAY BOOK | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Summary
Summary
"Midnight on Beacon Street is a lot of things. It's a taut thriller about a babysitter and two kids surviving one weird night. It's a celebration of classic horror movies. It's a creepy narrative that involves a ghost and late night home break-ins. And, most important, it's a lot of fun. . . Verona plays with home invasion tropes by delivering a tale with multiple breaches, each offering differing types of frights. . . With its feverish pacing and startling plot twists, this is an impressive debut." -- New York Times Book Review
"My nineties heart was warmed and thrilled by Emily Ruth Verona's debut novel, Midnight on Beacon Street. The shade of Shirley Jackson haunts this page-turner, which abounds in classic horror movie references, both revisiting and critiquing the tale of a babysitter left alone with kids she may or may not be able to protect. I loved every minute of it." --Polly Stewart, author of The Good Ones
A suspenseful and entertaining debut thriller--and love letter to vintage horror movies--in which a teenager must overcome her own anxiety to protect the two children she's babysitting when strangers come knocking at the door.
October 1993. One night. One house. One dead body.
When single mom Eleanor Mazinski goes out a for a much-needed date night, she leaves her two young children--sweet, innocent six-year-old Ben and precocious, defiant twelve-year-old Mira--in the capable hands of their sitter, Amy. The quiet seventeen-year-old is good at looking after children, despite her anxiety disorder. She also loves movies, especially horror flicks. Amy likes their predictability; it calms the panic that threatens to overwhelm her.
The evening starts out normally enough, with games, pizza, and dancing. But as darkness falls, events in this quaint suburban New Jersey house take a terrifying turn--unexpected visitors at the door, mysterious phone calls, and by midnight, little Ben is in the kitchen standing in a pool of blood, with a dead body at his feet.
In this dazzling debut novel, Emily Ruth Verona moves back and forth in time, ratcheting up suspense and tension on every page. Chock-full of nods to classic horror films of the seventies and eighties, Midnight on Beacon Street is a gripping thriller full of electrifying twists and a heartwarming tale of fear and devotion that explores our terrors and the lengths we'll go to keep our loved ones safe.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Verona's entertaining debut pays homage to classic horror movies with a 1990s-set whodunit about a New Jersey babysitter's night from hell. Seventeen-year-old Amy soothes her clinical anxiety by losing herself in the predictable horror films she's rented since childhood, finding peace in the ways they bend terror into formula. When she's hired to watch six-year-old Ben and 12-year-old Mira while their mom goes on a date, the gig couldn't feel farther from a John Carpenter classic. But before long, a group of obnoxious teens descends on the house for a party, and Amy is plagued by a mysterious caller who hangs up as soon as she answers the phone. Meanwhile, docile Ben claims to see a ghost and a "Cat Man" stalking the house, which Amy ignores--until Ben finds himself standing over a dead girl in a pool of blood just after midnight. Horror fans will delight in Amy's Scream-level genre literacy, and Verona maintains a brisk pace from start to finish. This giddy exercise in nostalgia pays off. Agent: Jennifer Weltz, Jean V. Naggar Literary. (Jan.)This review has been updated for clarity and to remove a spoiler.
Booklist Review
Amy is a teenager who deals with her generalized anxiety disorder by watching predictable horror movies and babysitting for several families. Amy's favorite family is made up of a 12-year-old named Mira and a 6-year-old named Ben, who reminds Amy of herself, and of whom she is very protective. Amy is spending what promises to be a normal night with Ben and Mira when her boyfriend, Miles, brings Amy's former babysitter, Sadie, and his own brother, Patrick, to the house. Things go downhill from there, and Amy very quickly realizes that the babysitter she once trusted--who, in fact, inspired her to become a babysitter--is something other than human, and most definitely dangerous. Amy must try to save the lives of the children she is responsible for while grappling with the idea that the people you trust most can in fact become the most dangerous, and the realization that fear, when not mastered, can drive a human being to the edge of their limits. For readers of other teens-in-jeopardy horror novels like The Night House, by Jo Nesbø, or even Stephen King's Carrie.
Library Journal Review
DEBUT It's 1993, and a normally sleepy New Jersey town is experiencing a rash of break-ins. Amy, an anxious kid who loves horror movies from the '70s and '80s, is the local babysitter, and tonight she is headed to single mom Eleanor's house to watch Mira and Ben. Verona telegraphs from the first page that this will not be an easy night, as the story opens at midnight--with Ben covered in blood. Told in short chapters, this intensely unnerving novel moves swiftly, while well-placed flashbacks provide the necessary background details to flesh out the main characters and anchor the story in its perfectly rendered setting. Both Amy and Ben are compelling narrators, whose different perspectives enhance the full gamut of emotions this book elicits. Readers will want to gulp this one down all at once. VERDICT Verona's debut is a riveting thriller and a thoughtful love letter to horror films. It will find its most enthusiastic audience with fans of the babysitter final girl trope from any medium, such as the movie Halloween and the novel The Babysitter Lives by Stephen Graham Jones.