The Sister’s Curse

Solvinic’s bold sequel to The Hunter’s Daughter puts Anna Koray of the Bayern County sheriff’s department on the trail of a possibly paranormal killer. While carrying out a drug bust in the rural Midwest, Anna hears a girl’s scream and alters course to race toward the sound. The source is a distraught teenage babysitter scrambling to find her four-year-old charge, Mason Sumner, whom Anna manages to rescue from a nearby pond. Scratches on young Mason’s body seem to indicate that he was dragged beneath the surface, and a skull found in his family’s mailbox reinforces the idea that he was the victim of a targeted attack. When other locals start dying under unexplained circumstances, Anna—the daughter of a prolific serial killer and an aspiring witch—decides to explore the Bayern County’s “occult underbelly,” dredging up dark memories from her childhood in the process. Not every fan of the previous novel will stick with this installment as Solvinic plunges Anna headlong into the supernatural, but the author’s gifts for atmospheric scene-setting and nail-biting suspense are undiminished. It’s likely to be polarizing, but adventurous readers should check it out. Agent: Caitlin Blasdell, Liza Dawson Assoc. (Oct.)