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Hotbed
FINALIST, INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR BEST HORROR NOVEL 2023
Phoebe follows her husband the mayor one night to see if he is cheating on her and steps into an apocalyptic nightmare.
The nightmare of the quarantine of a virus that triggers cannibalistic madness in its victims begins without fanfare in the small Southern California town of Costaguana.
Phoebe suspects her husband Jason of cheating on her with a prostitute, which is all the more shocking because Jason has the reputation of being an incorruptible mayor. Trailing him Phoebe watches him pick up a hooker in the red-light district on the Strip. She later goes to the hooker’s motel room to confront her and hears bloodcurdling screams and loud noises as she stands outside the hooker’s door. Phoebe flees in terror. She enlists the aid of her best friend Meredith, a misanthropic veterinarian who prefers animals to people, to accompany her to the hooker’s motel room the next day. While they are on the Strip, a helicopter appears in the sky and starts shooting people on the street without any explanation. The quarantine has begun.
- GenresZombies
335 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 16, 2023
10 people are currently reading
16 people want to read
About the author
Bryan Cassiday
64 books213 followersAward-winning author Bryan Cassiday writes thrillers and horror fiction. His novel Horde (Zombie Apocalypse: The Chad Halverson Series Book 6) won the 2022 Independent Press Award and the 2021 American Fiction Award for Best Horror novel. His novel Electric Green Mambas was a Finalist in the Reader Views Award for Thrillers 2021-22. His short story "Boxed" was published in the anthology Shadows and Teeth Volume Two, which won both the 2017 International Book Award for best adult horror fiction anthology and the Florida Association of Publishers and Authors President's Award gold medal for best adult horror fiction anthology 2017.
"A bracing page-turner with an unconventional hero."--Kirkus Reviews on Bryan's thriller Murder LLC
His thrillers include the psychological thriller The Payout and the Ethan Carr thriller Force of Impact, which Kirkus Reviews called "A fast-paced detective novel enhanced by exceptional characters and a striking ending."
Praise for Bryan Cassiday's Thriller Bolt
“From the very start, Bryan Cassiday spins what appears to be a typical Southern Californian private investigation novel in Bolt, but quickly takes off in a direction that speaks to our current troubled times. Well-plotted and crisply written, with great characterization, this is one to look for.”--Brendan DuBois, coauthor with James Patterson of The Cornwalls Are Gone.
"Noir suspense at its best! Private eyes, hit men, globe-trotting, and characters you don't know whether you can trust or not. Fans of James Ellroy, Dennis Lehane, and Fredrick Forsyth will love Bolt!"--Matthew Farrell, best-selling author of What Have You Done
Praise for Bryan Cassiday's Zombie Books
"The plot engages from the beginning and holds the reader's interest until the last page."--The Booklife Prize on Horde
"Cassiday blends thoughtful suspense and pulse-pounding terror to deliver a novel with both bite and creeping dread."--David Dunwoody, author of Empire and The Harvest Cycle
"Written with the epic scope of World War Z and infused with the gritty spook works derring-do of a Robert Ludlum spy thriller, Sanctuary in Steel is full of zombie mayhem through and through."--Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Flesh Eaters and Inheritance
"Sanctuary in Steel made me feel like I did the first time I watched Romero. Fresh, exciting and engaging like any outbreak story should be."--Iain McKinnon, author of Domain of the Dead
"A bracing page-turner with an unconventional hero."--Kirkus Reviews on Bryan's thriller Murder LLC
His thrillers include the psychological thriller The Payout and the Ethan Carr thriller Force of Impact, which Kirkus Reviews called "A fast-paced detective novel enhanced by exceptional characters and a striking ending."
Praise for Bryan Cassiday's Thriller Bolt
“From the very start, Bryan Cassiday spins what appears to be a typical Southern Californian private investigation novel in Bolt, but quickly takes off in a direction that speaks to our current troubled times. Well-plotted and crisply written, with great characterization, this is one to look for.”--Brendan DuBois, coauthor with James Patterson of The Cornwalls Are Gone.
"Noir suspense at its best! Private eyes, hit men, globe-trotting, and characters you don't know whether you can trust or not. Fans of James Ellroy, Dennis Lehane, and Fredrick Forsyth will love Bolt!"--Matthew Farrell, best-selling author of What Have You Done
Praise for Bryan Cassiday's Zombie Books
"The plot engages from the beginning and holds the reader's interest until the last page."--The Booklife Prize on Horde
"Cassiday blends thoughtful suspense and pulse-pounding terror to deliver a novel with both bite and creeping dread."--David Dunwoody, author of Empire and The Harvest Cycle
"Written with the epic scope of World War Z and infused with the gritty spook works derring-do of a Robert Ludlum spy thriller, Sanctuary in Steel is full of zombie mayhem through and through."--Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Flesh Eaters and Inheritance
"Sanctuary in Steel made me feel like I did the first time I watched Romero. Fresh, exciting and engaging like any outbreak story should be."--Iain McKinnon, author of Domain of the Dead
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 18, 2023
Not so hot...
What sounded like an action-packed race for survival turned out to be a long-winded story about a woman who not only made one dumb wrong decision after another, but even admitted to do so repeatedly.
Phoebe is married to the mayor and discovers he is cheating on her. Does she confront him? No: she expects him to confess everything after dropping a few mysterious hints. Does she leave him? No: she is afraid to loose her sheltered life. Does she blame him? Yes, at first she does, but then she comes to the conclusion that the prostitute he is seeing is to blame for his infidelity. So she decides to force Val to leave town and everything will be back to normal (really?!). But when she arrives at Val's home, she hears awful sounds which make her believe that Val must have killed someone. Does she call the police? No: of course not, she is the mayor's wife and can't be related to this part of town or this kind of woman. So she decides to take her best friend Meredith along to investigate what happened in order to blackmail Val. On and on it goes with Phoebe and her weird, naive and absolutely unworldly decisions, which lead her to a situation where she is trapped in a hotel in the middle of the quarantine zone...
It took half of the book to get Phoebe there, and it took some while longer before she realized the deadly danger outside must come from some kind of zombie outbreak. While the plot involved some other characters - the mayor himself, the hitman he hires to remove some threat to his career, Courtney who works at the hotel, and Phoebe's father who is a reporter and wants to investigate what's going on in town - their main common characteristic was their ability to make wrong decisions and get themselves in trouble.
At some point, I tried to interpret the book as some kind of strange parody, but even that didn't work and in the end I was even disappointed to see Phoebe survive (but glad it was over).
The premise of the book was really interesting and could have been made into a really decent zombie novel, but unfortunately it didn't meet up with my expectations. So I guess reading this book was my dumb decision here...
What sounded like an action-packed race for survival turned out to be a long-winded story about a woman who not only made one dumb wrong decision after another, but even admitted to do so repeatedly.
Phoebe is married to the mayor and discovers he is cheating on her. Does she confront him? No: she expects him to confess everything after dropping a few mysterious hints. Does she leave him? No: she is afraid to loose her sheltered life. Does she blame him? Yes, at first she does, but then she comes to the conclusion that the prostitute he is seeing is to blame for his infidelity. So she decides to force Val to leave town and everything will be back to normal (really?!). But when she arrives at Val's home, she hears awful sounds which make her believe that Val must have killed someone. Does she call the police? No: of course not, she is the mayor's wife and can't be related to this part of town or this kind of woman. So she decides to take her best friend Meredith along to investigate what happened in order to blackmail Val. On and on it goes with Phoebe and her weird, naive and absolutely unworldly decisions, which lead her to a situation where she is trapped in a hotel in the middle of the quarantine zone...
It took half of the book to get Phoebe there, and it took some while longer before she realized the deadly danger outside must come from some kind of zombie outbreak. While the plot involved some other characters - the mayor himself, the hitman he hires to remove some threat to his career, Courtney who works at the hotel, and Phoebe's father who is a reporter and wants to investigate what's going on in town - their main common characteristic was their ability to make wrong decisions and get themselves in trouble.
At some point, I tried to interpret the book as some kind of strange parody, but even that didn't work and in the end I was even disappointed to see Phoebe survive (but glad it was over).
The premise of the book was really interesting and could have been made into a really decent zombie novel, but unfortunately it didn't meet up with my expectations. So I guess reading this book was my dumb decision here...
November 19, 2023
"Hotbed" by Bryan Cassiday kicks off with Phoebe taking a wild ride. Suspecting her seemingly squeaky-clean mayor husband of cheating, she stumbles into a full-blown nightmare in their Southern California town. A virus turns people into crazy cannibals, and suddenly, it's a quarantine party.
Things get real when Phoebe, with her no-nonsense vet friend Meredith, hits the streets only to find chaos. A helicopter starts shooting without warning, and bam, quarantine time. Cassiday keeps you hooked with twists and turns, and the friendship between Phoebe and Meredith adds a cool touch.
Now, I'm not really into zombies. If there's one horror thing that scares me, it's zombies. But, surprisingly, this was still an engaging read, and the cast of characters was diverse and interesting.
Full disclosure: I got a copy from the author via LibraryThing, but all opinions are my own.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews