By: James Quinn
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Authoring a vampire sci-fi story is a delicate task to achieve but I daresay that author, James Quinn here has a masterpiece in Nightshades of New Orleans.
The plot opens with Luke and his daughter at the pharmacy. Baby Sue was a seemingly innocent girl until his father’s thoughts reveal his feelings of guilt and getting torn by knowing he needs to feed his daughter no matter the cost…or what human lives can be endangered. Even her mother Myrna grieved at what she became, blaming Luke for bringing her to the institute, “She came home a devilʼs child!” But there is more to be uncovered as the plot thickens and Luke recalls his De Leonne ancestry no matter how much he wants to forget those dark times.
That is just the tip of the iceberg but there is still so much to discover about the darkness that envelopes New Orleans. And I dare you to enter the world of the Nightshades.
Just by the first sentence in a novel, you can already tell how good a book can be and I must say, this is extremely impressive. You know what they say, that you don’t have to taste a whole jar of caviar to know how good it is? Well, this beyond good because it is rad!
I have a family though that I have been following closely in this book: they are the Tasker’s, a rich Southern family. Hugh and Claire Tasker are parents to Roxanne and her sister Delia. I particularly like Roxanne because even if on the outside she appears to be a disobedient young lady, inside, she is a caring friend to Alice and Charlotte. Instinctively, she knew there was something wrong about the sanitarium that her father sent her sister Delia to and I liked it that she was fearless enough in wanting to get her out of there. Meanwhile, Hugh as a father seems to be only doing what’s best for his daughter but parents have this tendency to see only their perspective and that is when their judgment gets clouded when it comes to doing what is truly best for their children.
I didn’t want the story to end but this was really well-written and I urge you to have a go at this book. I’m going to read other books by James Quinn next.
Versatile, holistic, and definitely extraordinary.
For a fiction novel, this is one I have read which covers different genres…and that is also because of that aspect that makes it unique and desirable to read. I see science fiction, action, mystery, historical fiction, thriller, and suspense. The horror seems subtle at the outset but it is actually very horrifying.
Needless to say, I enjoyed it tremendously. What a great work by author James Quinn!
One of the main characters to watch out for is Detective Trevor Howard. Trevor himself is a mysterious character as he is an outsider in New Orleans. He was only brought in to help in the serial killer investigation. He is quite keen though as he observed, “The bite marks on the pharmacist’s corpse were human, most likely that of a small child.” His role is important in this case as he is not as involved in the community as the others in Oakvale – at least in the early part of the story. How his involvement evolves though is a plot development to look forward to.
If they are going to turn this into a movie, I’ll be the first one to line up at the cinemas.
Luke, Myrna, Baby Sue…are they the merciless monsters who haunt the weak of Oakvale, or are they victims of the frightening circumstances that have entrapped New Orleans?
Nightshades of New Orleans is for me an unforgettable book that sets the bar higher for any fiction that I am going to read in the future. I believe that it is flawless, making me wonder how authors like Quinn can even come up with such a great story and sustain your attention throughout. Pure talent!
The experience was very cinematic in my mind and I didn’t mind spending my time with each page – I just had to find out everything that is happening with the characters. I had to know the fate that was in store for the wealthy Southern families in New Orleans. I was following the romance that was brewing between Lana and Trevor. I wanted to know more about the characters as Dr. Roth’s sanitarium and of their transformation. I want Charlotte to escape from her perpetrator. I don’t know why but I like it that Kash is pursuing Alice and the latter is attracted to the former as well even if she doesn’t who or what he really is.
This is one truly admirable work.
Authoring a vampire sci-fi story is a delicate task to achieve but I daresay that author, James Quinn here has a masterpiece in Nightshades of New Orleans.
The plot opens with Luke and his daughter at the pharmacy. Baby Sue was a seemingly innocent girl until his father’s thoughts reveal his feelings of guilt and getting torn by knowing he needs to feed his daughter no matter the cost…or what human lives can be endangered. Even her mother Myrna grieved at what she became, blaming Luke for bringing her to the institute, “She came home a devilʼs child!” But there is more to be uncovered as the plot thickens and Luke recalls his De Leonne ancestry no matter how much he wants to forget those dark times.
That is just the tip of the iceberg but there is still so much to discover about the darkness that envelopes New Orleans. And I dare you to enter the world of the Nightshades.
I don’t know why there are evil individuals in our society but when it comes to this novel, I have a candidate for Dr. Roth.
Dr. Otto Roth is a strange, mysterious character who gave me goosebumps. In society, he was sought after for his expertise in neurology, psychiatry, and award-winning genetic advances. To the world, he was a successful geneticist who runs a sanitarium for those needing healing and recovery. However, the Fairoaks Sanitarium is full of suspicious patients including Alfred, his valet. Dr. Roth thinks of his work as his valuable contribution to science not minding studying “the brain of a madman, one of New Yorkʼs most notorious serial killers.”
I am not gonna tell you all because you will find out soon enough once you read the book. But what I’m saying is that this has been more than worth it!
Seasoned author, James Quinn has done it again in Nightshades of New Orleans. I first encountered Quinn’s magic in his earlier novel, The Vampire’s Orchids. Aside from the vampire theme as a commonality, I also see consistency in the author’s first-rate storytelling that is fast-paced and never lacking in compelling factors. He definitely knows how to draw his readers into the story as if they are the most important part of it. Well, in my case, reading his books is indeed a treat so I don’t mind my involvement in it.
With Nightshades of New Orleans, I have found a fantastic world for which I became intrigued, scared, inspired, and moved. It is heartwarming and yet heart-wrenching at the same time. Get into the pages of this book and you will confirm these thoughts and feelings to be true.
The depiction of the Tasker family drama is one of my favourite parts of the novel. I’ve always been intrigued by how the rich lived their lives and the Tasker’s are enormously interesting. They do like keeping appearances especially in front of business acquaintances, at least this holds true of Mr Hugh and Claire Tasker. Meanwhile, their daughter Roxanne is out with her boyfriend Adam. Another daughter Delia is in some sort of insane asylum.
On the other hand, I literally got scared when I read these lines:
“They laughed nervously as they began to eat their dinner, oblivious to the gathering forces which would shatter their genteel way of life forever, just as similar forces had done in the distant, but not forgotten past.”
I cannot really do justice to how amazing the book is that I have opted to share these exact lines here.
I urge you to witness the Nightshades of New Orleans.
If you were to be born again, but this time free of any weakness and much stronger than you were before, would you take the chance? Will you welcome Dr. Roth’s help in experimenting with your own son? Are all vampires heartless creatures that you expect them to be? And what is your view on immortality?
These are just some of the essential questions you will be faced with as you read this upstanding novel by James Quinn. Humans evolve and they do not always stay the same but the question of how they overcome the challenges and transcend the trauma of something that they cannot change about themselves is what confronts the whole of New Orleans. The Nightshades have an undeniable effect on all of them and intrinsically, they can transform into vampires themselves. Who will you be able to relate to among the characters and how would you act as they have acted?
Read this!
This has been one helluva roller coaster ride and I meant this was really terrifying! I didn’t really expect much from this book. I just picked it up as I was chillin’ with my friend at his new loft. I’m not even a fan of books especially vampires, immortality, and what have you. I find them shallow and too phony for my taste. But wow! This one from James Quinn is something else. It was nighttime when I read so imagine how doubly scared I was when it was dark all around. The plot twists were so unpredictable that it was like the devil was on my face, staring directly at me! The scariest for me involves Miss Brooks, an old lady killed by a Nightshade. What happened to her in the coroner’s office caught me by surprise and sent shivers down my spine!
Welcome to the epic world of the Nightshades!
Are Nightshades indeed creatures of the night? What are they like during the day? Are they vampires? How do they feed on their victims? How did they come to be?
The Nightshades of New Orleans is a sci-fi masterpiece from James Quinn depicting atypical vampire action. Yes, the vampires bite but it is not without sorrow as their families get torn between feeding their loved one and victimizing another. And New Orleans is such a tight community, it is hard to tell which is a vampire and which is not until it bites, sucks, and devours you. Not only that, the Dark Arts is a welcome practice for some members and the rest cower in fear.
If you are brave enough to enter this world, I invite you to consume this gilt-edge novel.
Highly recommended for those looking to enjoy a superb read!
What I like about this vampire-inhabited novel is that it’s never boring or predictable. There is always something going on and I just go from chapter to chapter to find out more. This holds true from the time I finished the first chapter up to the epilogue. My interest did not dwindle at any time as it keeps building up. It tells you how the author, Quinn has executed the vampire story in a non-standard, cliché, or yes, boring way.
My favorite characters are the two detectives, Detectives Trevor Howard and Lana Corsaire. I find both to be quite impressive in their job and the romance that brewed between them was a bit unexpected for me. But whether they found the serial killer or not is for you to find out.
Personally, I find Nightshades of New Orleans to be an outstanding novel that is founded on science fiction and yet strategically relevant to reality. There is a thin line between creative and flaky sci-fi and that delicate balance can be a challenge to achieve. That’s the reason why I loved this book because the plot is so sophisticated and well-developed. It felt like reading it was a special privilege because it is not every day that you can come across very good literary material. In addition, character development is profound and wide-ranging. I revelled at each new character that was introduced and whom I have met. This book did not only make me think but feel in the most extraordinary of ways. I love it!
Too close to home…I was almost too scared to keep reading it. This was awesome from start to finish!
I’ve read and watched numerous vampire stories but nothing as real and as thrilling as the Nightshades of New Orleans. You know it’s fiction but the author has made it so authentic that you will almost believe it to be true. The emotions will run high as you read through the lines. It boasts of a highly imaginative plot, reflecting the author’s sheer talent. It is a mystery thriller and I didn’t even mind the hot romance mixed with it. The range of characters like Baby Sue, the Tasker’s, Dr. Roth, the DA, the Townsend’s, the detectives, and others as well as how their lives are interwoven makes it one helluva novel.
You can’t simply miss this one.
I love this book and I’m not saying that just to convince you to read it. I am giving this honest-to-goodness review of how brilliant it is because it is what exactly it deserves. On a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest, I give it a 5 for the superior composition, fear factor, intelligent writing, imaginative plot, an interesting band of characters, and so much more.
I think that the audience can be wide-ranging. This can appeal to early teens and adults as well. The story revolves around the vampires and other dark creatures that inhabited New Orleans. Another way to put it would be how some of the innocent, as well as the not-so-innocent inhabitants of New Orleans, turned into the immortal beings that are now terrorizing all of them.
The James Quinn brand of writing is superior, powerful, and worthy of praise.
This was evident in The Vampire's Orchids and was again witnessed here in the Nightshades of New Orleans.
The chase after the serial killer is one of the things that had kept me going through the book. I can almost imagine it as some kind of Netflix series that you just have to finish in one sitting no matter the number of episodes and seasons. It is that much of a page-turner!
The roles of the detectives, coroner, district attorney, geneticist, and the police chief were crucial and how they worked together…and against each other…made for one exciting, new vampire fiction I feel privileged to have completed reading. Thank you so much.
There was so much to discover and revelations in this book. There was the history of the South from which I learned a lot from. And there was also lobotomy and electric shock; and how it was used to cure the mentally ill in the past. And of course, there was the horror…raw, of orange eyes, experimental, and evil worship. If you imagine it, it is almost too much to take but at the same time, you cannot also stop yourself from finishing the book. The enigma that is the Fairoaks Sanitarium is another kind of horror...you would think it’s purely psychological but Delia and Max are just some proofs there is something else, something malefic going on in there. Just talking about it here is giving me the goosebumps!
Horrifying suspense, compelling drama, detective action. Nightshades of New Orleans is bound to let you enjoy every page.
Defenceless…that is how I exactly felt when I came to know about the vampires. They can attack at any unexpected moment or you can plan an attack against them and still, any wound you will inflict will just completely heal. Thing is, they are not alone, they have their own backup system but when they do strike, you are often alone. What a frightful situation to be in! But the thing that I like about how the author wrote it is that it makes you actually feel and experience it.
That’s why this is a great book to read. Not even movies or other multisensory multimedia can evoke that in you.
This is the first adult book I’ve read since I turned 16 and I am glad it was given to me on my birthday. My aunt didn’t probably know what to give me but she knew I was a voracious reader especially of vamp novels and I was happy she trusted my maturity for this kind of material. I had a great time reading it. The story itself stays true to everything vampire but it has surprising twists that appealed to me very much.
Moreover, I like how Roxanne and Alice are so different from each other, and yet they are the best of friends. Roxanne is a margarita and Alice is a coke.
Of course, Roxanne’s parents detested her boyfriend Adam. Though I can relate to these two more than the other characters in the book, I have no doubts recommending it to those interested in reading it.
“The demons created in our past lives are not very forgiving,” goes on one of the most striking lines in the novel that stuck with me. For there are genetic monsters out in New Orleans that should be feared but there are also demons inside our head. Nightshades of New Orleans is not your ordinary fiction novel.
I see it as stark parallelism between the darkness that lies in the internal and external world of humans. While outside in the dark, there are monsters lurking and waiting to pounce, inside our own minds, within our families, and our communities there are scarier monsters that need to be dealt with.
This is an incredibly profound and extraordinarily entertaining piece of work. A must-read for sure.
Yellow eyes, serial killers, blue-blooded Southern families, voodoo queens, and priestesses…Quinn has concocted a massively potent tale in Nightshades of New Orleans.
It is in New Orleans that you will find the tomb of the so-called Voodoo Queen as well as Sante Angeline, the most powerful of the living priestesses. There is also Dr. Roth who has devoted himself to human experiments that lend them recovered from a debilitating disease; that is if the experiment was successful. When it is not, oh well, the creatures escape the sanitarium to do God-knows-what and yes, possibly bring harm to other people.
There is so much that you will uncover as you read the book and I tell you, it won’t be a waste of your precious time.
This vampire fantasy novel is not to be underestimated.
If you are a vampire saga enthusiast, you probably hunger for a good story as I have. It is the most fascinating genre for me and yet I also know how it has been used over again that it can grow dull at some point. I thirst for something original and meaningful at the same time.
Nightshades of New Orleans by James Quinn is that longed-for exception. From the characters to the plot twist, it never failed to keep me on the edge of my seat. What’s more? This book is full of mysteries that never let you get off the hook. You don’t know how elated I was to have found it after having been disappointed in the past.
I never got tired nor disappointed reading it.
With an exhilarating lineup of characters, this outstanding novel was never a drag. It was well-thought-of and carefully planned that the result was a page-turner for a plot. The protagonist who has my attention caught the most is the detective from New York, Trevor Howard. He was the one who was brought in to help finally catch the serial killer which has been haunting New Orleans for years. The mysterious thing about him is that Trevor likewise hails from a high-society Southern family. Meanwhile, his experience is valuable in the investigation and he was smart enough to recognize the role that women’s intuition plays in trying to catch criminals. He is someone you can watch out for.
I recommend Nightshades of New Orleans without an ounce of hesitation.
I still can’t get over this book. I am hoping for a sequel? Anyway, Nightshades of New Orleans has everything that is new and unique in its perspective. And by this, I meant that the story is refreshing and it never came to the point where I had to put it down because it was becoming too dragging. What it is really is some kind of high-end psychological thriller that features different characters dealing with different kinds of demons. Evil is both literal and symbolic in this case and that’s what makes it so terrifying exciting.
It is soaked in mystery and it is up to the reader to discover the different truths that surround the lives of the characters, living, dead, or undead. I have only praise for this book and you should take time to read it.
I honestly didn’t know what to expect from the book as it was just handed down to me but whoa! I was immediately blown after reading the first chapter. That was a real shocker and of course, I continued on to the next chapters with undivided attention. What’s happening amidst the nightshades is to watch out for!
I followed the investigation of the serial killer closely together with the detectives, Governor Hadley, the police, and the rest. Even I wondered how come it’s been three years and they’re not even close to nailing the suspect. The profile fits that of a psychopath, a devil worshipper, or a sexual pervert. But hey, the rest is for you to find out.
I would love to read more from James Quinn!
If you should ask why you too should read this book, my answer would be that you will be missing on a lot if you don’t. It has everything that can satisfy any reader. It is mysterious, strange, and definitely compelling. The Southern setting holds its own secrets and intrigue. I don’t know that much about the south of New Orleans so this exquisite novel was a treat for me. As go through reading the book, you begin to discover each and every character’s background, knowing them deeply. Character development is one of this novel’s strongest qualities. The fear is so real but it also leaves you wanting to dig up more to get to the answers that flood your mind.
It is fearfully thought-provoking. This is definitely my new favorite.
A fresh, horrifying perspective you’ve never read about before.
How the story unfolds from page to page is a revelation I look forward to in this novel by Quinn. If I could just speed it up I would – that is how exciting it is. But then you are on a page, you will also savor every bit.
You do not get lost in the story or in the characters in any way because it is told in a deeply enthralling manner. The way it is pieced together is simply clever.
An extremely interesting antagonist for me is Max Gould. He has a twin brother Teddy and together they were apprehended for a terrible crime and diagnosed as psychotics by Dr. Roth. But only Teddy was caught and incarcerated. Max’s freedom meant other people’s abduction and harm. Oh, and he is a proud vampire. You must read!
A first-class novel that is deserving of more than just a 5-star rating.
As I was reading the book, Stephen King came to mind. Of course, no two authors are the same but the talent and the quality of the reading experience for me are on that same level. James Quinn’s ability to evoke fear that affects every part of you is a gift he gives readers generously and competently. The relevance to the human condition is skillfully deep: a father hoping against hope for his daughter, Baby Sue; a mother waiting for his son Evan to come home; a friend desperately looking for her friend, Charlotte; a geneticist going against all odds to create the human being of his dreams; and so on and so forth. The rest is for you to find out and revel at.
Nothing like a truly talented author like James Quinn to give you high-quality literary entertainment.
I am not one to be easily impressed by a book because I can be very discriminating. I have a good command of the English language and I tend to correct as I read and that is no way to enjoy a book. Fortunately for me, Quinn took charge of that part and I do not have to correct, edit, or cringe as I read because what we have here is a superb reading resource that just lets me relish every part of it.
As you go deeper into the book, you will discover how the characters will evolve and how the story evolves in its true meaning.
Nightshades of New Orleans is definitely on my top 10 must-reads!
Every aspect of this novel is a sight to behold. I am satisfied to the fullest.
For one, there are numerous chapters in the book but they are short and just right. I like that the author has written it this way because the result is a compelling page-turner you can savor. Secondly, I met a good number of characters but I don’t get confused or easily forget them because each one has an important role to play that has been established well that is easy to recall. Third, I like how the story itself is well-researched, grounded in reality, and very relatable.
Overall, I would like to give this work of fiction 5 solid stars. It made my night!
If you were Max, would you choose to be a vampire or remain a vulnerable human being?
I mean, if you were a vampire, you can do literally do anything you want. Who cares if it is aggressive. We humans have a lot of aggression within us just waiting to be unleashed. So why restrict yourself?
These were my thoughts when I was reading this awe-inspiring novel authored by James Quinn. What it is really is a deeper take into that typical vampire tale that has been told countless times. I like that it is not only entertaining but more so experiential and highlighting how it relates to humanity as a whole.
This is a breakthrough experience I wish for everyone to benefit from.
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