In 1930s Chicago Harper Curtis discovers a key to a house that is a time-travel portal. He finds and tracks young girls who "shine" in his eyes through different eras, killing them as they develop into young women. He uses this fantastic ability as a means of extending and titillating his inner demons. Unknown to him, his victim in 1989, Kirby Mazrachi, survives his vicious attack. As she works to find the identity of her assailant, she tracks down clues to other killings and realizes a serial killer is at work. Her determination, cleverness, and insight are what saves the book from being just another thriller about an opportunistic, sadistic killer on the loose. VERDICT H.G. Wells's The Time Machine set up fiction's basic mode of travel through time with a portal. Strangely for an award-winning sf author, Beukes (Moxyland; Zoo City) uses time travel as a plot vehicle yet neither explains nor expounds upon its magical existence. But readers who enjoy genre-bending fiction will be drawn to her memorable heroine's determination to save her future by resolving her past. [See Prepub Alert, 12/14/12.]—Susan Carr, Edwardsville P.L., IL
One of the best crime books of the decade! (CrimeReads)
"Intriguing...Beukes deals with slightly surreal things in very real ways. I'm all over it."—Gillian Flynn, O magazine
"A grisly crime thriller meets sci-fi action meets historical fiction in a wildly inventive summer page-turner."—Entertainment Weekly
"One of the scariest and best-written thrillers of the year, not to mention the most memorable portrait of a serial killer since Henry H. Holmes in....Erik Larson's 2003 nonfiction bestseller The Devil in the White City."—Chicago Sun-Times
"A triumph ... [T]he smart and spunky Kirby Mizrachi is as exciting to follow as any in recent genre fiction ... [E]ach chapter in which [Harper] appears holds a reader's attention, especially the sharply described murder scenes - some of which read as much like starkly rendered battlefield deaths out of Homer as forensic reconstructions of terrible crimes ... This book means business."—NPR.org
"[Beukes is] so profusely talented - capable of wit, darkness, and emotion on a single page - that a blockbuster seems inevitable....The Shining Girls marks her arrival as a major writer of popular fiction."—USA Today
"The premise is pure Stephen King, but Beukes gives it an intricate, lyrical treatment all her own."—Time
"THE SHINING GIRLS is utterly original, beautifully written, and I must say, it creeped the holy bejasus out of me. This is something special."—Tana French
"A tremendous work of suspense fiction. What's more, it's a fabulous piece of both time-travel and serial killer fiction, using the intersection of those two themes to explore questions of free will, predestination, and causality in a mind-melting, heart-pounding mashup that delivers on its promise."—Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
"I loved THE SHINING GIRLS. It really is a new kind of thriller, sitting somewhere between The Time Traveller's Wife and The Silence of The Lambs. A dark, relentless, time-twisting, page-turning murder story guaranteed to give you heart palpitations. It shines."—Matt Haig, author of The Radleys
"Very smart...completely kick-ass. Beukes' handling of the joints between the realistic and the fantastic is masterful, and those are always my favorite parts, in this kind of story. Not the weirdness (which is itself superb here, and very ample) but the segue to it. The liminal instant."—William Gibson
Unreservedly recommended."—Joe Hill
"One of the summer's hottest books."—Wired.com
"One of the summer's hottest books."
Unreservedly recommended."
"Very smart...completely kick-ass. Beukes' handling of the joints between the realistic and the fantastic is masterful, and those are always my favorite parts, in this kind of story. Not the weirdness (which is itself superb here, and very ample) but the segue to it. The liminal instant."
"I loved THE SHINING GIRLS. It really is a new kind of thriller, sitting somewhere between The Time Traveller's Wife and The Silence of The Lambs. A dark, relentless, time-twisting, page-turning murder story guaranteed to give you heart palpitations. It shines."
"A tremendous work of suspense fiction. What's more, it's a fabulous piece of both time-travel and serial killer fiction, using the intersection of those two themes to explore questions of free will, predestination, and causality in a mind-melting, heart-pounding mashup that delivers on its promise."
"THE SHINING GIRLS is utterly original, beautifully written, and I must say, it creeped the holy bejasus out of me. This is something special."
"The premise is pure Stephen King, but Beukes gives it an intricate, lyrical treatment all her own."
"[Beukes is] so profusely talented - capable of wit, darkness, and emotion on a single page - that a blockbuster seems inevitable....The Shining Girls marks her arrival as a major writer of popular fiction."
"A triumph ... [T]he smart and spunky Kirby Mizrachi is as exciting to follow as any in recent genre fiction ... [E]ach chapter in which [Harper] appears holds a reader's attention, especially the sharply described murder scenes - some of which read as much like starkly rendered battlefield deaths out of Homer as forensic reconstructions of terrible crimes ... This book means business."
"One of the scariest and best-written thrillers of the year, not to mention the most memorable portrait of a serial killer since Henry H. Holmes in....Erik Larson's 2003 nonfiction bestseller The Devil in the White City."
"A grisly crime thriller meets sci-fi action meets historical fiction in a wildly inventive summer page-turner."
"Intriguing...Beukes deals with slightly surreal things in very real ways. I'm all over it."
"Imagine Poe and Steinbeck in a knife fight where Poe wins and writes Jack the Ripper's version of The Grapes of Wrath. Lauren Beukes's THE SHINING GIRLS is even scarier than that."
"THE SHINING GIRLS is enthralling and dazzlingly inventive. Lauren Beukes risks everything with a startlingly original structure, that's perfectly executed. A huge accomplishment."
"A tremendous work of suspense fiction... a mind-melting, heart-pounding mashup that delivers on its promise."
"One of this summer's hottest books."
"A compelling roller coaster read."