Between This World and the Next

May 1, 2024
The year is 1998 and Joseph Nightingale, aka Fearless, is a burnt-out war photographer from the UK dealing with grief. He is invited to stay in Cambodia, where he meets Song, an 18-year-old Cambodian woman trapped in a life of violence and fear hoping to be reunited with her twin sister. Their paths cross unexpectedly when Song chooses to help Fearless, which becomes the catalyst that changes both of their lives forever. After Song disappears, Fearless decides to uncover the truth, which leads him into a world of sex trafficking, corruption, betrayal, power, and greed. In this international thriller, Praveen Herat writes a page-turner that will keep readers questioning who to trust, when the characters should take action, how to decide who is good or bad, and how far the two main characters will go to overcome their pasts and confront their demons. Although heavy in its subject matter, love and found family lie at the story's core.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 15, 2024
A world of hurt envelopes veteran war photographer Joseph "Fearless" Nightingale and a brutalized young Cambodian woman, Song, as both seek to overcome tragedy. It's the late 1990s. Fearless, a Black Londoner who passes for white, has flown to Cambodia to deal with ghosts. He's reeling from the murder of his father, a revolutionary-minded professor, who was shot at the end of a visit with Pol Pot, and from the death of Fearless' romantic partner and unborn child in a car crash. Song, 18, a product of poverty and negligence, has been enslaved by a sadistic brute in an apartment from which she has not been allowed to step outside for three years. Shocked to learn that her twin sister, Sovanna, from whom she was separated years ago, is alive and being held in a nearby building, Song stages an escape and attempts to rescue her, armed with Molotov cocktails--only to have her sister vanish behind the flames. Having had his self-pity doused and his empathy awakened by his brief encounters with the courageous Song, Fearless finds her and joins her in a search for Sovanna that takes them through a criminal underground that springs bad surprises. A Russian expatriate who Fearless thought was a friend turns out to be a ruthless arms trader who was involved in the horrific abuse and murder of trafficked children. Herat recalls Robert Stone with his themes of morality, redemption, and uncrossable cultural boundaries. The dizzying narrative, which for long stretches circles around basic plot elements, sometimes loses focus. But in capturing a place and state of mind in which corruption is viewed as "the only breach against chaos," the London-based, Sri Lanka-rooted author has given us a book that won't be easy to forget. A dogged thriller with political bite.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 27, 2024
A British war photographer travels to Cambodia seeking to escape a personal tragedy, only to become entangled in the region’s criminal underworld, in Herat’s ambitious debut. Joseph “Fearless” Nightingale, who is reeling from the death of his pregnant wife, heads out drinking with his longtime friend and travel companion, Alyosha, shortly after they arrive in Cambodia. Their night takes a perilous turn when Fearless is drugged by strangers, then left for dead. Song, an 18-year-old Cambodian woman enslaved at the apartment complex where Fearless is staying, discovers his limp body and nurses him back to health. Sensing that Fearless might help her and her twin sister, Sovanna, who is enslaved in a nearby villa, Song sneaks out of the complex and leaves behind a videotape for him, which offers evidence of a sex trafficking ring involving several international power brokers, including Alyosha. As Fearless figures out what to do next, Song frees Sovanna by setting her villa ablaze, triggering a violent retaliation that touches each of the novel’s main characters. Herat impresses on his first time out, with well-shaded characters and gripping suspense, though things start to feel overstuffed by the final act. Still, this is worth seeking out.