“Dust” by Susan Berliner Book Review

About the Author:

Susan Berliner has been a nonfiction writer for nearly her entire career. She had originally planned to be an elementary school teacher, but left after a year to become a newspaper reporter for Fairchild Publications. She covered men’s retailing for Daily New Record, a men’s wear/textile trade newspaper, which was the “brother” paper of Women’s Wear Daily.

After Susan’s children were born, she switched to freelance writing–mainly in education–publishing several book series dealing with editing skills, language arts, and standardized testing. She has also created teachers’ guides, student activity sheets, and test passages. During this time, Susan was the project editor for a national science magazine for elementary school students and edited subject-related manuscripts for children in grades 7 and 8. In addition, she freelanced as a local reporter, covering board meetings for the North County News, a weekly newspaper in Yorktown Heights, New York.

When she returned to work full-time, Susan became the promotion manager of the Yorktown PennySaver, a job she held for 20 years. She created many original weekly contests–Phony Ad, Rhyme Time, and PennySaver Prophet.

Susan lives with her husband, Larry, in Yorktown Heights, where she is preparing her second book (Peachwood Lake) for publication and writing her third novel.

For more information on the book and author, please visit: www.susanberliner.com

The Review:

Karen McKay comes home after a long day and notices something isn’t quite right when she enters her house.  She sees a small dust tornado.  This may not seem that unusual, but this one is on the inside, with nothing to cause it.  Also, this dust is not dirty looking, but multi-colored.  As she watches, it spins over to a small figurine, picks it up, and drops it which causes it to shatter.  Karen really isn’t sure what to think, but before jumping to any conclusions she decides to see if she can find out some more information on dust funnels.  She doesn’t find anything substantial, but also doesn’t have another encounter so she writes it off as an unusual occurrence and decides to forget about it.

Unfortunately, the dust seems to be attacking the people that live in the condos where Karen resides.  She becomes terrified to stay at home by herself because she has no idea what to expect.  Will she fall down her steps?  Will it pick up objects again, but instead of dropping them throw them at her head?  Or will she reach the fate of some of the people, and end up in the hospital, or even dead?  Perhaps the most frightening of all is why?  And where do they come from?  With the help of her ex-husband, Karen is able to learn more about the dust but will it be enough to stop it?

I loved the way the author wrote this book, adding enough suspense to keep you on the edge of your seat, but not too much to turn away people who can’t stand a lot of graphic violence.  The characters are extremely well written and compliment a story that is new and refreshing.  I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a good mystery but with a very new twist.  Very well done!

About the Book:

While unloading groceries in her Rock Haven condo, Karen McKay notices a strange swirl of red, green, and blue dust. The swirl follows her inside, lifts a porcelain ballerina from her wall unit, twirls it in the air, and throws it to the floor, shattering it into pieces.

The following evening, Karen hears her neighbor’s dog barking loudly. Upon investigation, she finds her neighbor, Marion, at the bottom of the stairs—dead. At the top of the stairs, a colorful whirlpool of dust circles ominously.

Now the feisty librarian must consider the unthinkable: Could the dust be responsible for her neighbor’s death and, if so, would it kill again? Karen turns to her ex-husband, Jerry, for help and together they bravely confront the mysterious dust. But will their daring actions cost them their lives?

So the dust can strike at any time,” Jerry continued. “You saw it at twilight and evening. We both saw it in the middle of the night, and yesterday it showed up in the afternoon.”

“The dust’s picked up and thrown a porcelain figurine, a watch, a baseball, and scariest of all, a person…Marion.” Karen’s eyes teared when she mentioned her neighbor’s name.

“So all we have to do is find a way to stop something that can appear and kill us at any time, with no warning,” Jerry said. “Sounds easy enough.”

Karen shook her head and sighed.

READ THE REVIEWS:

“Ms. Berliner reaches into the comfortable places of your consciousness and implants this super-force of malignancy that appears to be unstoppable. The usual authorities cannot be brought in to assist, as the evil dust can appear and disappear at will, and of course, who will believe the few people who have actually witnessed its destructive–yet highly unbelievable–force? She has woven a very comfortable setting, in a very comfortable community, with very comfortable people together with an apparently unbeatable foe–as ethereally light as the air around us, yet as deadly as the most feared supernatural event. Dust is a great read!”
-L. Commodore

“The book was great! What I liked most was that I couldn’t figure out the ending. Pure suspense! A lot of similarities to Stephen King. Can’t wait until the movie version!”
-I. Leonard

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