Review: Ghosts of Mateguas: A Mateguas Island Novel by Linda Watkins
★★★★ 
Karen Andersen could be envied. She has a loving husband, wonderful children with a new arrival to light up her life, and a home near the coast to ease her mind on days when the gray sets in. Yet there’s a secret pain that Karen carries with her, carried from another coast of a place she can never forget: Mateguas.
After the terrifying ordeals of her time there, Karen knows she has to return; it’s the only way to put down her torments for good. Will Karen do what must be done? Is her son doomed to be cursed […]
The disconcerting tale of Kai by Derek Vasconi follows the harbored Satsuki Takamoto, a girl living through a downward spiral of social exclusion, universal envy and ever-deepening depression; in comparison, Seul Bi Rissiello – a resident of Evanston, Illinois – is caring for the mentally ill as she strives for meaning in her life after the brutal loss of her parents in gruesome circumstance. Although unaware of each others existences, both girls live a seemingly poetic tandem of suffering as an unexpected thread ties their tortures together.
In the year 2030, humanity is devastated by a terrifying plague that forces survivors into a life of cloistered fear. A quarantine is built into a city, known as Colloseo, where Colloseo Super Max Prison houses some of the worst examples of the surviving human race. When a military genius comes up with a new super-soldier program using these violent outcasts, twenty-year-old Dylan is inducted into a series of experiments to enhance his body and replace his mind. The plan goes awry, forcing one doctor to gift the former Dylan a chance at free will in order to save the […]
