Bedbugs

July 11, 2011
The man behind Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters returns with an original novel set in New York's Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, a tony enclave of young families, high-end strollers, and fancy cookware (in Winters's mind if not exactly in reality). The Wendtsâinfrequent artist Susan, husband Alex, and daughter Emmaânewcomers to New York City, move into a suspiciously cheap apartment as a nearby mother rolls her twins off the roof, sparking a general turn to the creepy. Susan gradually becomes isolated as she encounters a "massive" stranger staring from the shadows of the yard, a noise of uncertain origin, a suicide close to home, and mysteries surrounding the apartment's last tenants. Increasingly troubling events culminate in a case of bedbugs that is demonic in scope. By turns gruesome and compelling, fueled by a slow-burn tension, and full of in-jokes about contemporary Brooklyn culture, Winters's breezy summer read will leave readers compulsively scratching.

September 1, 2011

Susan and Alex Wendt, along with their wee child, Emma, have finally made the move into a lovely brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. Alex's commercial photography business has just been blessed with some major-name clients, and Emma loves her new school. All sighs of relief and with settling in behind them, Susan embarks on her renewed career as a fine artist. But wait. Who's been tampering with her paintings? And what about these ever-present insects that the exterminator never seems to see? Is Susan a victim of the paresthesia phenomenon called formication? Or is something more sinister going on? VERDICT Winters, author of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman, delivers up a grand B movie-style psychological thriller complete with some genuinely creepy moments. Read it with the lights on so you can keep an eye out for those squirmy little buggers.--Russell Miller, Prescott P.L., AZ

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2011
The author of the monster mash-up hit Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (2009) offers up a chilling tale of life in the perfect New York abode gone horribly wrong. Susan and Alex Wendt can't believe their luck when they find a reasonably priced Brooklyn Heights brownstone apartment. The landlady, Andrea, is a chatty widow who welcomes the Wendts and their young daughter into the apartment above her own. At first Susan is thrilled to have a space to paint and pursue her artistic aspirations, until she's greeted with a horrible smell in the room she's set aside for her studio, and she finds one of her paintings altered. When small bites start appearing on her body, Susan is convinced the apartment is crawling with bedbugs, despite the fact that neither her husband nor her daughter has been bitten. As Susan researches the insects, she starts to believe the bugs are the manifestation of a curse that drove the previous tenant to her deathand is now threatening her. Winters expertly builds suspense in this chilling thriller.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)