Bride of the Tornado

Informationen zum Autor James Kennedy is the author of the horror thriller Bride of the Tornado , which the Guardian named one of the Best Recent Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Novels in September 2023. James's previous books include the sci-fi novel Dare to Know , which was named by the Times Saturday Review as a Best Sci-Fi Book of 2021, and the young adult fantasy The Order of Odd-Fish . In addition, James is the founder of the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival, an annual video contest in which kid filmmakers create short movies that tell the entire stories of Newbery-winning books in about 90 seconds. He also hosts the Secrets of Story podcast with Matt Bird. James lives in Chicago. Klappentext "In a midwestern town, a high school girl's life starts to change as the adults in town begin talking about a mysterious event known as Tornado Day and the girl finds herself drawn to the strange boy known only as the tornado killer"-- Leseprobe They called it Tornado Day but none of us knew what it was about. Mom and Dad wouldn't tell us. Neither would our teachers. I never remembered having a Tornado Day before and neither did Cecilia or any of our friends or anyone at school. All that week leading up to Tornado Day, Mom and Dad didn't let us eat much. I wasn't even supposed to feed Nikki. Breakfast was, like, one piece of dry toast. Lunch was a hard-boiled egg. Dinner was nothing. Late one night Cecilia and I were so starving we snuck some blueberry Pop-Tarts to eat in her bedroom, but they tasted wrong. I felt guilty somehow and ended up throwing most of mine out. I fed Nikki anyway. All that week we weren't allowed to watch TV. We couldn't even listen to the radio. Dad unplugged everythingthe VCR, the stereo, the microwave, the alarm clocks, all the way down to the toaster and the coffee maker. He and Mom took the batteries out of the flashlights, the boom box, my Walkman, and even old toys Cecilia and I hadn't touched in years. They unscrewed the light bulbs and put them in a box along with the batteries. The refrigerator was cleared out. Mom and Dad stopped talking to us. It was the same with everyone else's parents. Someone said it's what you had to do to prepare. Prepare for what? Nobody would tell us. A killer was coming to town. That's what we heard from the other kids. We were all scared. We asked, is the killer coming for us? The adults wouldn't say. The day before Tornado Day all the stores closed early. We didn't have to go to school. The house was quiet except for the patter of rain and Nikki meowing in the kitchen. It wasn't much of a holiday. Growing up, when there were tornadoes, Mom and Dad and Cecilia and I would all run down to the basement with candles and food grabbed from the kitchen, and when the electricity blacked out we'd light the candles and set them all around the cold gray basement until it flared up like a cathedral. The candles pushed back the darkness and made it dance, colors multiplied, became richer and warmer. We'd hear the tornado raging outside, pounding at the doors and windows, shrieking like it was mad at us personally, but I felt safe, locked down in the concrete basement, cozy and cared for, but just dangerous enough for me to feel a thrill. I liked the tornadoes because they forced Cecilia and Mom and Dad and me to hang out together. We played Monopoly and Clue, we listened to our little transistor radio, Dad told funny storiesI wanted more tornadoes, more thunderstorms, because I wanted us to be close like this all the time. But when the lights flickered back on, when the all-clear siren sounded, Mom and Dad would get up from our game too quickly, Finally! they'd say; Cecilia, too, would bolt up the stairs, and then I would be left alone on the basement's concrete floor with the abandoned game, surr...

Autorentext

James Kennedy is the author of the horror thriller Bride of the Tornado, which the Guardian named one of the “Best Recent Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Novels” in September 2023. James‘s previous books include the sci-fi novel Dare to Know, which was named by the Times Saturday Review as a Best Sci-Fi Book of 2021, and the young adult fantasy The Order of Odd-Fish. In addition, James is the founder of the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival, an annual video contest in which kid filmmakers create short movies that tell the entire stories of Newbery-winning books in about 90 seconds. He also hosts the Secrets of Story podcast with Matt Bird. James lives in Chicago.

Klappentext

**A young woman's secretive midwestern town is engulfed by a mysterious plague of tornadoes every generation–and she must escape it before it claims her.

Stephen King’s The Mist meets David Lynch’s Twin Peaks in this inventive, mind-bending horror-thriller.

In a small town tucked away in the midwestern corn fields, the adults whisper about Tornado Day. Our narrator, a high school sophomore, has never heard this phrase but she soon discovers its terrible meaning: a plague of sentient tornadoes is coming to destroy them.

The only thing that stands between the town and total annihilation is a teen boy known as the tornado killer. Drawn to this enigmatic boy, our narrator senses an unnatural connection between them. But the adults are hiding a secret about the origins of the tornadoes and the true nature of the tornado killer—and our narrator must escape before the primeval power that binds them all comes to claim her.

Audaciously conceived and steeped in existential dread, this genre-defying novel reveals the mythbound madness at the heart of American life.

Zusammenfassung
“A powerfully weird, original tale that combines American folk horror with a surreal coming-of-age nightmare.”—The Guardian

Stephen King’s The Mist meets David Lynch’s Twin Peaks in this surreal, mind-bending horror-thriller.

In a small town tucked away in the midwestern corn fields, the adults whisper about Tornado Day. Our narrator, a high school sophomore, has never heard this phrase but she soon discovers its terrible meaning: a plague of sentient tornadoes is coming to destroy them. 

The only thing that stands between the town and total annihilation is a teen boy known as the tornado killer. Drawn to this enigmatic boy, our narrator senses an unnatural connection between them. But the adults are hiding a secret about the origins of the tornadoes and the true nature of the tornado killer—and our narrator must escape before the primeval power that binds them all comes to claim her. 

Audaciously conceived and steeped in existential dread, this genre-defying fever dream of a novel reveals the mythbound madness at the heart of American life.

Leseprobe
They called it Tornado Day but none of us knew what it was about. Mom and Dad wouldn’t tell us. Neither would our teachers. I never remembered having a Tornado Day before and neither did Cecilia or any of our friends or anyone at school.
     All that week leading up to Tornado Day, Mom and Dad didn’t let us eat much. I wasn’t even supposed to feed Nikki. Breakfast was, like, one piece of dry toast. Lunch was a hard-boiled egg. Dinner was nothing. Late one night Cecilia and I were so starving we snuck some blueberry Pop-Tarts to eat in her bedroom, but they tasted wrong. I felt guilty somehow and ended up throwing most of mine out.
     I fed Nikki anyway.
     All that week we weren’t allowed to watch TV. We couldn’t even listen to the radio. Dad unplugged everything—the VCR, the stereo, the microwave, the alarm clocks, all the way down to the toaster and the coffee maker. He and Mom took the batteries out of the flashlights, the boom box, my Walkman, and even old toys Cecilia and I hadn&rsquo…