BRAIN CHILD, Pocketbooks Inc., Arrow Press, London, ECI, Holland. The story of a brilliant high school senior girl who is quite taken with the science of behavioral modification. When her father suffers a stroke, she experiments with her own family, turning her home into a laboratory, unbeknown to her teachers and neighbors who have only the highest regard for her. It isn’t until a teacher becomes suspicious that her terror is exposed. Seemingly void of conscience, she is placed in a mental institution, but the ending leaves us with the clear indication that she is smarter than those who would try to “cure” her.

SOMEONE’S WATCHING, Pocketbooks, Inc., Arrow Press of London. The story of Marty, age seventeen and Judy, age fourteen, who become stepbrother and stepsister when their parents marry. Marty’s father attempts to rape Judy, and Marty beats him off. The pair flee to a nearby, seemingly deserted old resort in the Catskills, where they discover the owner still living as if the hotel were about to open. They participate in the old man’s fantasy to keep themselves safe. They carry on a Romeo and Juliet romance unaware they are constantly under watch by the owner’s retarded grandson, who, infatuated with Judy, eventually kidnaps her to keep her in his attic retreat. The confrontations result in Marty’s father being killed in an action filled resolution.

IMP, Pocketbooks Inc., Severn House, London, Arrow Press, London, Mary Oaks, a religious woman, marries a man who proves to be far less than she anticipated. After their first child, a daughter, is born, Mary retreats deeper into her religion and when her husband forces her to make love and she becomes pregnant, she decides this child must be evil. After her husband is killed in an DWI accident, she gives birth to the baby in the house and keeps it in the basement. Five years later, IMP finds his way out and becomes something of a terror during his nocturnal trips. When he endangers the life of a five year old girl, the horror is exposed.

CHILD’S PLAY, Zebra Books. Alex Gold and his wife Sharon are childless after a dozen years of marriage. They live in what was Alex’s family’s tourist house. Alex was brought up by a father obsessed with the battle between good and evil. He created his own system of morality. When Alex talks Sharon into their taking in foster children, he begins to indoctrinate them with his inherited ideas, turning them into his private force for good. Sharon becomes a virtual prison in her own home, terrorized by these children. She tries to destroy them, but ironically, she destroys herself and Alex and the children escape to be placed in other homes, carrying the baggage of Alex’s ideas along with them.

REFLECTION, Worldwide Library. Cynthia Warner, a real estate agent and part owner with her brother Jason of their family insurance business, married Stephen Warner who became Jason’s partner. In time, Stephen comes to idolize Jason, imitating him in every way possible: style of clothing, politics, etc. One day, in the course of selling an old tourist home, Cynthia finds an old news clipping describing a murder that took place in the house. The victim’s picture shocks her because there is a close resemblance to her. She is further shocked when she reads the story and learns the victim had come to the house with her husband and brother. Haunted by the similarities, Cynthia pursues the old news story, discovering more and more to frighten her about her own situation. Eventually, she discovers the shocking truth that her brother is a homosexual and her husband has been controlling him, not vice versa. In the dramatic resolution, Cynthia takes control of her fate by shooting Stephen.

TEACHER’S PET, Zebra Books. Adam Lucy, a professional tutor, goes from town to town tutoring problem children, especially rich, problem children. However, at his present location, he gathers a small group of these children and turns them against their parents, school teachers and other students. With his help, they destroy a young teacher who suspects something and eventually, they murder the valedictorian in a ritualistic killing. Adam also has an affair with a young, married woman, who bears his child. After Adam’s children commit their gruesome act, he turns them into the police himself and leaves to go on to another village and start again. Could he be the devil?

LOVE CHILD, Tor Books. (Erotic Fantasy) Carol Papus lives with her grandmother in a small upstate New York community. Carol’s understanding is that her father deserted her mother and her mother was killed in a car accident. Carol is plagued by violent sexual dreams, often awakening in the middle of the night to find she has grown bigger and harder. When a young man tries to rape her, she kills him with this instantaneous super strength. Frightened by what she’s done, she flees home and her grandmothers tells her the truth: Carol is a descendent of an ancient tribe of Amazons who live undetected in the modern world. Her grandmother had taken her from her mother in hopes she will not become one of them.

However, when her mother and another “sister” arrive with a young girl Carol’s age, they take her on a hunt. Carol flees, disgusted with the results. Her grandmother, persuaded Carol is doomed to become an Amazon, decides to drug her and burn the house down with her and Carol in it.

But in the end, Carol’s mother’s rescues her from the house. Her grandmother dies in the fire. However, Carol, angered by her mother’s obviously deliberate failure to rescue her grandmother, too, pledges to take revenge. She is, after all, quite different.

ILLUSION, Worldwide Library: Jillian Caldwell, late twenties, works for an advertising agency in New York. Ron Cutler, early thirties, comes to her for a promotional project for his upstate New York Department stores. A romance ensues. Shortly after Ron presents Jillian with an engagement ring, he disappears. Phone calls do no good. There is no number in his name and the department store knows only a John Cutler.

Jillian goes upstate to search for Ron and discovers Ron has been dead for five years. When she confronts John Cutler, Ron’s father, he finally confesses that his wife was unable to have children and he impregnated another woman, paying her to have his child. Jillian finds the woman and discovers that, unknown to John, she had twins and kept one, expecting to blackmail him later. However, she grew so attached to the child herself, she brought him up and eventually told him the truth.

Paul Kane (Ron’s twin) became obsessed with the idea that his twin brother’s identity had merged with his own. He learned all he could about his dead brother and, in something a schizophrenic episode, he courted Jillian. At first Jillian is angry, but she love she experienced was significant and she develops a new love affair as she helps him face up to his identity crisis. When she brings him to his father, she provides everyone with a second chance at happiness.

BLOOD CHILD, Berkley Books: Dana and Harlan Hamilton, a couple in their late thirties, are about to have their first child, but the baby dies in the delivery room. Harlan presents his wife with an alternative: adopt a baby just born to an unwed teenager. The girl’s family is anxious for the adoption, especially when the girl’s mother learns Dana was going to breast feed. Dana does become infatuated with the infant and they take the child home. At home it is Harlan’s teenage sister Colleen, who first discovers something unusual about the child. However, Dana, who is more and more possessed by the child is angry at her for making any suggestions and Colleen’s boyfriend thinks she’s crazy. Colleen invites her religious friend Audra to the house to see the baby and Audra’s ostentatious cross causes the baby to become hysterical, but no one thinks anything of it. Dana’s mother arrives to help with the baby, but Dana is so possessive, she even resents her own mother. One night her mother disappears. Colleen discovers Dana’s mother’s body in the woodshed, drained of blood. She faints and she is taken to the hospital. When she tells her brother what she saw, he goes back and finds nothing. A nurse arrives to help Dana with the infant. Dana’s new doctor recommended her. The nurse begins to dominate the house and even seduces Harlan. After Colleen’s friend Audra disappears, too, one night, Colleen goes searching for her and discovers a coven of vampires. In the resolution, Audra saves Colleen, even though Audra’s been turned into a vampire. Harlan realizes the danger Dana is in and returns to the house just in time, but the nurse and the baby are gone. They’re out there!

SISTER, SISTER, Berkley Books, Arrow Press in London.

Neal Richards, a teacher of handicapped students, is hired for a special assignment in a nearby research center: tutor conjoined twins kept alive and hidden in a twelve year experiment. Neal discovers that the twins have extrasensory perception and other paraphysical powers. He and the psychologist, Tania Weber uncover the real reason for the experiment–to master the extrasensory powers and create a new weapon. In the end they are frustrated from exposing the gruesome project when a fire appears to have destroyed all, including the twins; but in the epilogue we learn the twins were separated in an operation that resulted in one’s death. The survivor lives in a mental institution, but there is the eerie sensation that her twin sister still lives within her in many ways.

THE IMMORTALS, Pocketbooks, Inc.

What if Ponce de Leon really did discover the fountain of youth? Mr. Leon is alive in the 20th Century and is the owner of a youth cream company. His handpicked salespeople are his disciples. They are rationed pills that permit them to remain forever young and healthy, but the cost is soul-wrenching. Mr. Leon, who sees himself as a god, demands terrible sacrifices, often sacrifices of loved ones as a demonstration of loyalty. When Cynthia Edwards realizes her husband has become part of this madness and she will eventually be the victim, she tries in vain to make her husband understand. Finally, she must save herself when she accompanies her husband to the Leon compound.

THE NEED, Putnam Books, Berkley Reprint.

When Clea Cave, a beautiful movie actress, awakens in bed to discover her hands bloodied and her lover beaten to death beside her, she decides it’s time to confess. She goes to a detective who has been investigating similar murders he’s labeled the Love Murders. He suspects Clea’s brother. In the course of her confession, however, Clea reveals she is an Androgyny, a race of people who metamorphose from female to male. In the male state, they hunt and kill women to feed their energy to live on. They have a mythology that justifies their existence and actions. At first the detective is obviously skeptical, but as Clea continues her story, he becomes more entranced. She takes him along on an erotic, terrifying journey, seducing him as well. However, when an androgynous woman is found murdered, Clea realizes she and her kind are being hunted by the infamous Devil. A series of events show her that he has taken possession of the detective and is plotting her own death. Originally intending to turn herself in and her male counterpart for killing her lover, she now turns her male counterpart loose on the detective devil and returns to the fold.

AFTER LIFE, Berkley Books.

In a small upstate community, the country doctor is possessed by Satan who is returning his most loyal souls from hell, having them possess the bodies of his patients when these patients are near death or suffer accidents. Into this scene comes a school teacher and his wife, blinded in a car accident. She is the only one who realizes, through her second sight, just who the good doctor really is. Through her efforts, the devil is eventually defeated, but not before her husband falls into a crisis and is about to be possessed as well.

NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH, Pocketbooks, Inc.

In an upscale housing development in upstate New York, Philip Slater, the developer and president of the homeowners’ association, turns his association into a quasi-Nazi organization, imposing strict rules and regulations on the residents and enforcing them with a private security force. Into the setting comes Kristin and Teddy Morris with their five year old daughter. Gradually, the pressure builds on the young family, made to conform, until Kristin realizes their are sinister forces at work in this supposed perfect development. Their former owner did not, as they were told, commit suicide, and her girlfriend, who with her was trying to make changes, was not mugged, raped and killed by an outsider. Kristin’s private investigation exposes the domestic horror and brings down the Neighbor Hood Watch before it’s too late for her own family.

ANGEL OF MERCY, Putnam Books, Berkley reprint.

Faye Sullivan is a private duty nurse in Palm Springs, California. She lives with her twin sister Suzy, who is handicapped with a bad leg, but who works in the homes of the people for whom Faye specials. However, Suzy believes that when a loved one passes away, the bereaved is better off following his or her lost one. She helps them along a la Arsenic and Old Lace. Frankie Samuels, a Palm Springs detective, is forced to consider retirement after a heart problem. He picks up on the unusual number of suicides and begins an investigation that leads him to the horrifying conclusion: Faye and Suzy Sullivan are really the same person. Faye, like Norman Bates, is a multiple personality. The discovery almost costs Frankie his life before he resolves the terror.

NIGHT HOWL, Pocketbooks, Inc., Arrow Press in London, Hjemmet in Norway.

In a secret laboratory in the Catskills, scientists with government sanction are experimenting on the transfer of human brain cells into the brains of animals. They have successfully done so with a German Shepherd, but the dog escapes. The scientists, unfamiliar with the forest, hire a tracker, Mike Qwen, to pursue the animal without telling him what he is really pursuing. Meanwhile, the dog begins to reek havoc with a nearby community. Eventually, Qwen, discovers the truth and joins forces with a small town police chief. The dog eventually reaches the South Bronx, where the final confrontation is held. (Note: Script by Andrew Neiderman written and available.)

Angel of Mercy, Putnam, Berkley reprint

A thriller about a private duty nurse whose twin sister off’s the bereaved widow or widower of her patients. Set in Palm Springs, California, it is a Psycho of the hospital story because of its unexpected twist. The main character is a nearly retired detective who figures out the secret.

In Double Jeopardy, Pocketbooks Inc.

A thriller about a convicted and executed killer who returns to pursue the sister of his ex-wife, his victim. He is not a ghost. This is a convoluted thriller that involves the FBI, and the Witness Protection Program.

The Dark, Pocketbooks Inc. A psychiatrist wife comes to believe her husband’s latest patient is the devil. His influence over her husband and his other patients lead her to make very exciting and near fatal discoveries.

Curse, Pocketbooks, Inc. (Also published by Simon and Schuster UK)

A woman who practices good witchcraft in a small upstate New York community is indicted for murder by a politically motivated district attorney who accuses her of deliberately frightening a sick man to death through psychological torments.

Amnesia, Pocketbooks, Inc., March, 2001

Aaron Clifford, a New York city architect in his early thirties finds himself in a state of amnesia. returning to what he considers his wife and child, he discovers they are in the process of moving to a new community. All seems to be perfect except part of Aarons condition is the recurrent nightmare images, some grotesque, that flashes across his mind at unexpected times. A new image appears and when he tracks it down, he makes a shocking discovery. He might be someone else.

Dead Time, Pocketbooks, Inc, March 2002. (Also published by Simon and Schuster UK)

Wealthy elderly widows are solicited to be part of and support an experimental research program restoring youth. This leads to an intriguing murder in L.A. and a pursuit that involves a nearly retired detective and a young businessman, a pursuit that reveals a conspiracy of money and power bigger than either of them could imagine.

Under Abduction, Pocketbooks, Inc., November 2002.

A young woman has an affair with a married man, becomes pregnant and is then kidnapped by a pair of seemingly mad right-to-lifers before she can get an abortion. She is held captive.

The Baby Squad…..Pocketbooks Inc, August 2003

From Publishers Weekly: Set in the late 21st century, this nightmarish novel from Neiderman (Under Abduction, etc.) portrays a world where sterility is mandated, pregnancy is a crime and children are born under clinical supervision, ensuring that every twist of their double helixes will result in a Perfect Child. Naturally, there are those who yearn for pregnancy the old-fashioned, “Abnormal” way. Neiderman’s fast moving tale weaves together several such characters, but focuses on Natalie Ross, a romance novelist who was born an Abnormal. Despite her best efforts at using black market birth control, Natalie finds herself pregnant which could ruin her lawyer husband. Even more intriguing is a story line involving a group of young girls who are infatuated with the idea of pregnancy; at meetings of their clandestine PYPC (Pretend You’re Pregnant Club), they stuff pillows under their shirts and commune on prenatal vitamins. One Machiavellian girl, hyper-sexualized and fascinated by the violence of animals, resorts to murder when threatened with exposure.

Neiderman’s light touch and breezy style make this well -worn idea seem new again.

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Take a trip into the not-too-distant future and visit quaint, quiet Sandburg, New York – a model town, representative of a “brave new world.” Welcome to a time and place where people are neighborly, there’s no crime and life is at its all-time high. However, looks can be deceiving. For if you scratch the surface of this Mayberry- like town, you’ll see the lies, dissension and deception writhing within. Otherwise, why would there be a need for Hattie Scranton and her vigilante Baby Squad?

The Baby Squad is the most feared organization of all. Even though it has no official standing, no one is allowed to get in its way. For those who seek to break the rules, ostracization is the least of their worries!

Babies are no longer a right, but a privilege, and applications have to be filled out and special attorneys hired before any couple is allowed to have a baby. No longer brought by stork, babies are created genetically from the couple’s own approved and much tinkered with DNA. Want to do it the natural way? Forget it. This is a stylized dystopia, where any person who isn’t of genetically engineered birth is considered defective and low on the life-chain, no matter how talented they may be. And in Sandburg, Hattie Scranton is the harridan keeping everyone in line.

Then murder strikes the heart of this quiet little town, and it’s up to a “natural” detective to get to the bottom of the deception and lies, at the risk of his own life and career. And he’ll learn more about himself, and his humanity, in the process.

Neiderman’s use of surreal and almost two-dimensional characters, transmits the feelings of disjointedness and wrongness to the reader. His scenes have more color than his characters, which allows a disquieting feeling to creep in subtly. This feeling continues to manifest more fully with each page turned. At the same time, there are no really identifiable characters in the story who can be a decided turnoff, because at times they come out almost flat. Nonetheless, it’s a sci-fi thriller coupled with enough mystery to make it well worth the read.

Reviewed by Anne Barringer Courtesy Old Book Barn Gazette.Deficiency, Pocketbooks, Inc., Simon and Schuster, UK., August, 2004: When young women are dying from vitamin deficiency diseases in the Catskills, young doctor Terri Barnard begins a diagnostic investigation that leads her to an astounding discovery, a science experiment gone wrong and an original terror villain. “…a strong setup and an intriguing villain….” Publishers Weekly. will appeal to fans of Robin Cook and Michael Palmer, July 28, 2004
Paige Thorndyke is supposed to meet her friend at a bar but she never shows up. Instead, she meets a handsome stranger and after uncharacteristically taking a few drinks, she goes to a hotel with him. After having sex with him, she becomes very ill; she is rushed to the hospital where she dies. An autopsy shows that she was suffering from an acute form of scurvy unheard of in modern in America; to add to the mystery, witnesses at the club tell investigators she was energetic dancing up a storm. Dr. Terri Barnard, the doctor who was going to treat Paige, is going home when the police pull her over. Kristen Martin is very ill and dies before Terri can give her any treatment. An autopsy shows that she was suffering from beriberi, another vitamin deficiency disease. The man who had sex with Paige also had sex with Kristen Martin. A phony BCI Investigator questions her, but when a third woman dies in a similar manner after being seen with the same man, Terri realizes she knows enough to conclude that her life is in danger. The story is told from the points of view of the heroine and the antagonist so that readers can see the juxtaposition between the caring doctor and the socially detached man who does not even know his own name. Andrew Neiderman writes reality based horror novels that involve humans battling other humans in the eternal battle of good vs. evil. DEFICIENCY will appeal to fans of Robin Cook and Michael Palmer. Harriet Klausner

THE HUNTED, Pocketbooks, Inc, 05; Simon and Schuster UK, 06. : Murder of big game hunters in the Catskills triggers a crisis in the tourist industry. A young female reporter hooks up with a handsome, loner to discover the truth behind the apparent serial killings which turn out to be something quite different.

FINDING SATAN, Pocketbooks, Inc, 06: The first thriller in which science and religion ally to defeat Satan. Christopher Drew, a psychic who is now a parapsychologist, has put together a team of researchers who have successfully captured the movement of aura energy through the use of cameras and weather satellite photography. They have theorized that a certain shade of aura is evil energy and when what looks like an impending storm of it is directing itself toward an area in Maine, Dr. Drew flies there to see if he can prevent anything bad from happening. He prevents another Columbine. The authorities do not take him or his people very seriously. However, the sighting of a second, even greater accumulation of the aura occurring on the West Coast enables Drew to prevent a major terrorist dirty bomb event at the Los Angeles Pier in Long Beach. The leader of a Satanic cult is drawn by these events to Dr. Drew and his research center in upstate New York. The Vatican, also intrigued by these events and the possibilities, sends an agent from their clandestine spy network. Christopher Drew’s artist girlfriend, reading the photos of the auras tracked in the country notices that the evil aura avoids a specific area in Arizona. Research about that area leads Christopher and his girlfriend to visit a theological anthropologist who had been searching for the site of the Garden of Eden and now resides in this area of Arizona. After a series of violent confrontations and events, our Vatican emissary and our Satanic leader and his enforcer track Dr. Drew and his girlfriend to the anthropologist’s home where a shocking Biblical revelation rescues Christopher and his girlfriend and defeats the agents of evil.

Unholy Birth, September 07, Pocket Books An original take on the Rosemary’s Baby genre, Unholy Birth is the story of two gay women who decide to have a child and contract with a home insemination company that gives them far more than they wanted. Set in Palm Springs, California, the story weaves us through the science and the religious implications that put the protgonists in conflict with each other and eventually, a most unique Satanic cult.

Life Sentence, Severn House, December 07 When a clandestine corporate organization employs a research scientist well known for his work with aging as a disease to come up with a medically just solution to alleviate the overcrowding prison systems in the not-so-distant future, they unleash more evil than they had ever dreamed existed.

Deadly Verdict, Severn House, June 08 Imagine the legal system in the United States built upon a pool of federal professional jurors trained to judge evidence objectively, their true identities kept secret and their assignments so quick and varied, there is no chance for bribery.

When a professional jury foreman goes missing, the FBI assigned to their protection and investigation puts Holland Byron, an attractive, intelligent agent on the case with a lead agent introduced as Wyatt Ert. Holland thinks his name is an in-joke and she’s being teased by a still male top heavy police bureau. Wyatt is mechanical, annoyingly brilliant, yet at times boyish and innocent. She soon wonders who and what he is. Soon, not only are the jurors missing and dead, but their wives and husbands go under attack as well. Is the entire program under attack or is it just vengeful guilty defendants? The shocking discoveries Holland makes about Wyatt and the new legal system turn a sci-fi detective story into challenging questions about the nature of man and the pursuit of good and evil in an increasingly impersonal world.

The Magic Bullet..Dorchester Publishers, December 08

Andrew Neiderman’s new novel, The Magic Bullet, is a medical thriller on the cusp of the most recent discoveries in cancer treatment strategies. It is a story filled with action and fast pacing, strong character development and a fascinating turn in a plot that will appeal to female and male readers.

Only as a last resort, fifteen-year old Taylor Petersen is asked to donate his white blood cells and platelets for his cousin Jody, dying of Leukemia. When an inexplicable remission occurs, Jody’s doctor calls his college friend, Dr. Allan Parker, a cancer researcher obsessed with discovering the so-called Magic Bullet.  Allan is intrigued and excited because recent discoveries at a cancer research center in North Carolina found cancer-resistant mice whose white blood cells when transfused into mice with cancer cured the mice instantly. Could this be the same phenomenon only involving people?

Allan travels to Palm Springs where the incident has occurred, meets Taylor’s mother, discovers his father had been exposed to radiation at a nuclear site before Taylor was born, and concludes Taylor carries the Magic Bullet.  The thriller then first begins when a dying mobster learns, through Taylor’s mother’s boyfriend, that he carries a miracle cure. A bundled kidnapping and a chase turns The Magic Bullet into a novel of tension, romance and action. Contemporary excitement like it’s never been!

GUARDIAN ANGEL, Dorchester, 2010

When Megan Lester decides she has had enough of a marriage in which here husband is more involved with his father’s businesses than her and their daughter, she files for divorce.  Out with girlfriends to boost her courage and start life anew, a handsome stranger saves her  from a pesty and annoying man.  At first intrigued with him, she is soon concerned about his overly protective behavior.  When she is attacked one night and her daughter is kidnaped, the police accuse her husband, but she soon discovers she is in a nightmare.  With elements of Fatal Attraction married to The Fugitive, this is a non-stop thriller.

Garden of the Dead, Severn House, November, 2010

Randy Quinn had a difficult high school social life because of the nature of his father’s work. His father was a grave digger and cemetery manager.  Eventually,  Randy  took over his father’s position as manager of an exclusive cemetery, and despite what his contemporaries think of his work, he is proud of the care he takes to do his job.  Still unmarried and living in his parent’s house after their passing, he is worried when the twin brother and sister of a wealthy man insist on burying him with expensive jewelry. Grave robbers! Shortly afterward, when he notices that the grave has indeed been dug up, he uncovers the coffin to see if it has been robbed and makes a shocking discovery that leads him down a dark path threatening his life.

 

Lost in His Eyes, Severn House, 2015 UK, 2016 U.S.