The Year of Disappearances: A Novel

by Susan Hubbard Narrated by Joyce Bean

Overview

In the sequel to her acclaimed debut novel, The Society of S, Susan Hubbard continues the adventures of Ariella Montero, who, in the midst of the ongoing presidential campaign, discovers that a leading contender for America's top political office just happens to be a vampire surrounded by the demons of lying, cheating, and murder.



The Year of Disappearances traces Ariella Montero's fourteenth year, during which she is accused of lying, cheating, and murder (twice). Her education continues, but instead of literature, science, and math, she learns folklore, the art and craft of journalism, and most important, the nature of personal demons. The book's themes involve masks and the duality of the self, the evil of hypocrisy, and the perpetual conflict between the desires of the flesh and those of the spirit. As Ari comes to question her own authenticity, listeners may begin to question her. Could the accusations against her be justified? Is she a reliable narrator? Or is someone else at work, telling us her story?

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Fourteen-year-old Ariella "Ari" Montero, who's half human and half vampire, wants to know why bees are vanishing as well as humans in Hubbard's smooth supernatural thriller, the sequel to The Society of S(2007). Ari has moved to Homosassa Springs, Fla., hoping for happiness with her reunited parents, but after a hurricane hits and a fire almost kills Ari and her scientist dad, he leaves. Ari is further upset when a new friend, Mysty, disappears. The precocious Ari enrolls in college, dates and gets a crush on a visiting (vampire?!) politician, but is horrified when Autumn, another new friend, is murdered. After Ari's father returns and becomes ill, she and her mom wind up fighting for her dad's survival. The ending promises greater challenges ahead. Though Ari sometimes sounds more like 40 than 14, Hubbard's intriguing tale poses a tantalizing question: will humans or vampires ultimately inherit Earth? (May)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Library Journal

Though quotes from Hubbard's first book in this vampire series, The Society of S, suggest her writing might appeal to fans of Stephenie Meyer, this slow-paced, eventually thoughtful but problematic novel indicates otherwise. Fourteen-year-old Ari, who in Society discovered she and her parents were vampires, is now living with her mother in a sleepy Florida town. When a new acquaintance of hers goes missing, Ari's "weirdness" makes her a suspect and brings the FBI back into her life. Her efforts to fit in are again derailed when another of her friends is murdered. Wise beyond her years, Ari makes for an appealing narrator, but in truth she doesn't have much to tell. The plot meanders, and the various mysteries it presents are never really resolved (possibly making room for another book in the series); in the end, Ari is in about the same place as when she started. Most puzzling is Ari's vampirism, which, excepting her powers of invisibility and capacity to heal quickly, seems to serve no purpose at all. For larger libraries with devoted paranormal fans. [See Prepub Alert, LJ1/08.]
—Jane Jorgenson

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170824823
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	05/20/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

The Year of Disappearances
A Novel

By Susan Hubbard Simon & Schuster
Copyright © 2008
Susan Hubbard
All right reserved.

ISBN: 9781416552710

Preface

Someone is standing in my bedroom doorway, watching me sleep, then watching my eyes open. In the dim light I can't see who stands there, looking at me.

But a moment later I am with the watcher, closing the door and moving down the corridor, toward my father's room. We don't open the door, but we know he's sleeping inside.

We smell the smoke. As we move toward the kitchen, the smoke becomes a presence, a gray mass spiraling down the corridor. Wan light spills from the kitchen, and now we see the fire -- white flames shooting through gray whorls -- and the shadowy forms of two men. At first they look as if they're embracing, but their embrace is really a struggle. They're fighting for something we can't see.

Then I am myself again.

The watcher leaves, followed by one of the men. They pause outside to lock the front door. I hear the click of the lock and lurch away, trying not to breathe. I'm on my hands and knees, crawling from the fire. I keep my mouth shut, but the smoke is already in me, burning my lungs. Then come words: Help me, trapped and strangled in my throat before they can be spoken.

As I wake from the dream, I hear guttural keening -- a primordial noise that predates language -- rising within me.

My mother's voice comes out of the dark. "Ariella? What's wrong?"

She sits on the edge of my bed, lifts and cradles me in her arms. "Tellme."

Why do we tell our dreams to those we love? Dreams are unintelligible even to the dreamer. The act of telling is a vain attempt to decode the indecipherable, to instill significance where likely there's none.

I tell my mother the dream.

"You were back in Sarasota," she says. Her voice is measured and calm. "On the night of the fire."

"Who were they?" I ask.

She knows I mean the shadow figures. "I don't know."

"Who locked the door?"

"I don't know." My mother holds me closer. "You had a bad dream, Ariella. It's over now."

Was it a dream? I wonder. Is it over?

A few days before my fourteenth birthday, I awoke in a glass coffin, a chamber used for oxygen therapy to treat smoke inhalation. On another floor of the hospital, my father recovered inside a similar device.

The third person rescued by the Sarasota firefighters was Malcolm Lynch, an old friend of my father's. The emergency medical technicians reported finding a driver's license in his wallet. But when their van reached the hospital, the stretcher was empty.

The investigators said the fire had been caused by ethyl ether, a highly flammable liquid. They found an empty canister in the kitchen, but they weren't able to trace its source.

Those are facts that others have told me. When I think about the fire, my recollections come out of order. I remember waking up in the hospital. Then I recall the day before the fire -- Malcolm, a tall blond man in a tailored suit, stood in the living room, telling my father without apology that he'd killed my best friend.

The experience of the fire itself? I don't know if what I recall is a memory, or only a bad dream.

Copyright 2008 by Blue Garage Co.

Continues...

Excerpted from The Year of Disappearances by Susan Hubbard Copyright © 2008 by Susan Hubbard. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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