The Shining Girls: A Novel
(Libby/OverDrive eBook, Kindle)

Harper Curtis isn't your run-of-the-mill serial killer. He gets to time travel from the 1920s through the 1980s, killing girls in different decades, all to satisfy a bloodthirsty Chicago bungalow. Yes, you read that correctly: the house makes him do it. In this genre-bending novel, Beukes never explains the origins of this evil house or how it manages to transport Harper from year to year. All we know is that Harper is compelled to track down and murder specific shining girls in gruesome ways (usually evisceration), and he gets away with it since he can escape across time. Until he leaves Kirby Mazrachi behind in 1989, that is. Kirby miraculously recovers from the vicious attack and is determined to track down her assailant, even if the police consider it a closed case. She enlists the help of Dan, a reporter at the Sun-Times, and they slowly uncover odd clues left behind in a dozen unsolved murder cases; it turns out Harper has been leaving behind items from the future. Not for all tastes, but fans of urban fantasy may be interested in this clever and detailed supernatural thriller.--Vnuk, Rebecca Copyright 2010 Booklist

South African author Beukes, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Zoo City, adds an intriguing wrinkle to the serial killer suspense novel. In the creepy opening chapter, set in 1974, sadist Harper Curtis, who's on the prowl for one of his "shining girls" ("bright young women burning with potential"), approaches six-year-old Kirby Mazrachi, as she plays alone. After an initially friendly exchange turns nasty, Harper promises that he will see Kirby when she's grown up. In 1989, he keeps that promise by savagely attacking her. Miraculously, Mazrachi survives and leverages an internship with a Chicago newspaper into a private investigation of her assailant who can travel through time. The shifting perspectives require readers to stay alert, but those who do will be rewarded. Beukes is particularly good at garnering sympathy for Harper's female victims, creating deep characterizations in only a few pages, so that they come across as more than just fodder for a psychopath's mission. 5-city author tour. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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 (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Beukes carries her experimentation in science fiction (Moxyland, 2010) and fantasy (Zoo City, 2010) to very dark corners as she follows a time-traveling serial killer who preys on young Chicago women from the 1930s until the 1990s. In 1974, a little girl named Kirby takes a toy pony from a strange man in his 30s named Harper. In 1931, Harper, a tramp no older or younger than in 1974, hears and follows mysterious music to a boarded-up tenement and opens the front door with a key he has found in the pocket of a coat he stole earlier that night. Inside the house, which is elegantly furnished, is a man's dead body. On the bedroom wall are the names of girls possessing a special glow that he must extinguish (and his first victim is a young showgirl with a literal glow about her from the radium she uses in her act). Each time Harper leaves his house, he can travel in time. He marks his victims first by giving them small gifts, then returns years later to kill them. And he returns again and again to 1931. Because of his ability to travel in and out of the 60-year time frame, he avoids suspicion. But there are glitches. In 1951, the transgendered showgirl he met in 1940 kills herself before he can kill her. In 1993, an artist turned crack addict has already lost her shine by the time he strikes. And Kirby, whom Harper assumes he has killed in 1989, has managed to survive. By 1993, when Harper's pace has sped up, Kirby is a student intern for attractive, middle-aged newspaper reporter Dan, who covered the story of her attack. Tracking her assailant, Kirby begins to suspect the bizarre nature of Harper's vicious killing spree. Despite thrillingly beautiful sentences, Beukes' considerable imaginative powers seem wasted in this shallow, often ugly game of cat and mouse tarted up with supernatural elements that do not bear too much scrutiny.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Harper Curtis isn't your run-of-the-mill serial killer. He gets to time travel from the 1920s through the 1980s, killing girls in different decades, all to satisfy a bloodthirsty Chicago bungalow. Yes, you read that correctly: the house makes him do it. In this genre-bending novel, Beukes never explains the origins of this evil house or how it manages to transport Harper from year to year. All we know is that Harper is compelled to track down and murder specific "shining girls" in gruesome ways (usually evisceration), and he gets away with it since he can escape across time. Until he leaves Kirby Mazrachi behind in 1989, that is. Kirby miraculously recovers from the vicious attack and is determined to track down her assailant, even if the police consider it a closed case. She enlists the help of Dan, a reporter at the Sun-Times, and they slowly uncover odd clues left behind in a dozen unsolved murder cases; it turns out Harper has been leaving behind items from the future. Not for all tastes, but fans of urban fantasy may be interested in this clever and detailed supernatural thriller. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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

Harper Curtis is down on his luck, a drifter in Depression-era Chicago with a predilection for violence. When he finds a key to a special house that allows him to travel through time, he uses the house (or it uses him) to hunt down and kill certain special girls, his Shining Girls. Kirby Mazrachi is identified as a Shining Girl, but she survives Harper's brutal attack and starts hunting him. VERDICT The gripping mix of sf, horror, and suspense works because of the way the likable characters Kirby and her newspaperman ally contend with the menacing chill of Harper and his special house. (LJ 4/1/13)

South African author Beukes, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Zoo City, adds an intriguing wrinkle to the serial killer suspense novel. In the creepy opening chapter, set in 1974, sadist Harper Curtis, who's on the prowl for one of his "shining girls" ("bright young women burning with potential"), approaches six-year-old Kirby Mazrachi, as she plays alone. After an initially friendly exchange turns nasty, Harper promises that he will see Kirby when she's grown up. In 1989, he keeps that promise by savagely attacking her. Miraculously, Mazrachi survives and leverages an internship with a Chicago newspaper into a private investigation of her assailant who can travel through time. The shifting perspectives require readers to stay alert, but those who do will be rewarded. Beukes is particularly good at garnering sympathy for Harper's female victims, creating deep characterizations in only a few pages, so that they come across as more than just fodder for a psychopath's mission. 5-city author tour. (June)