Bloodroot

The brilliantly ambitious thriller— frightening, twisted, and filled with secrets and heartbreak— from the author of Fresh Kills.Kevin Curran wants to unite his family, but he's ready to give up on his younger brother, Danny— three years lost to heroin addiction and hard, desperate living on the streets of New York. When Danny shows up on Kevin's Staten Island doorstep, looking clean, fit, and prosperous, Kevin can't help but be overjoyed that his brother has escaped his past life. But at what price? Not even Kevin's worst nightmares could have prepared him for the horrors he'll discover about his brother's dark history.After a brief reunion, Danny offers Kevin a role in an underworld plot revolving around the Bloodroot Children's Hospital, an abandoned juvenile asylum with a nefarious past. Hoping to rescue Danny from his criminal life after years ago failing to save him from his addiction, Kevin accepts.While Danny's plan unfolds, Kevin is drawn into a world of murder, Mafia hit men and dangerous espionage. The halls of Bloodroot reveal one horrifying secret after another: about the building's history, about Danny's life of addiction and crime, and about the true roots of the Curran family. At the end of the maze of monsters, the brothers make a discovery so horrific it may force them to destroy each other.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.