Book of the Day

From the review

Daniel Stansfield has one day left in the FBI and plans to spend it doing nothing. He left Denver in a hurry four years ago, and the job had been grinding him down well before that. Then a call pulls him back with the worst possible news: whatever he ran from has started up again. Ordinary people are coming to on the shoulder of a highway with no idea how they got there, dressed in a victim's skin, a stranger's hair knotted around the tongue. That image is the engine of this horror novel, and it's a good one. Grotesque, oddly specific, and impossible to file under a normal murder case. For its first stretch, Headlights plays like a crime thriller with the lights off, all dread and procedure. Then it slides sideways. Daniel's childhood does the driving, along with a mother who named his sense for certain places and warned him off dismissing it. The shadows he sees turn out to have an explanation. The book unfolds in six parts across two timelines, the second built around Hannah, who shares his gift and carries a grief of her own. The chemistry between them is obvious, and the relationship stays messy. Readers split on whether it's moving or overcooked, which tells you how much risk Leede takes with it.