16 blockbuster September science fiction and fantasy releases to kick off Fall
By Lacy Baugher
Fall 2021 release: The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess – Andy Marino
Author Andy Marino makes his adult fiction debut with a disturbing tale of a woman whose life begins to unravel in the aftermath of a home invasion. Though Sydney Burgess survived the attack and narrowly escaped with her life – that’s not the story the police recount to her afterward. In their version, she killed the intruder, violently. LIke, stabbed him 28 times and mutilated his body afterward violent.
Strangely, Sydney has no memory of any of this – and things only get weirder when she returns home and strange things start happening all around her. As strange objects appear and blood begins to drip down her walls, Sydney must figure out what’s happening to her and confront the trauma of her own past addictions before it’s too late.
The official synopsis describes the story as follows.
"Sydney’s spent years burying her past and building a better life for herself and her eleven-year old son. A respectable marketing job, a house with reclaimed and sustainable furniture, and a boyfriend who loves her son and accepts her, flaws and all. But when she opens her front door, and a masked intruder knocks her briefly unconscious, everything begins to unravel. She wakes in the hospital and tells a harrowing story of escape. Of dashing out a broken window. Of running into her neighbors’ yard and calling the police. What the cops tell her is that she can no longer trust her memories. Because they say that not only is the intruder lying dead in her guest room, but he’s been murdered in a way that seems intimately personal. When she returns home, Sydney can’t shake the deep darkness that hides in every corner. There’s an unnatural whisper in her ear, urging her back to old addictions. And as her memories slowly return, she begins to fear that her new life was never built on solid ground-and that the secrets buried beneath will change everything."
The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess is available on September 28.