Explore our new BookBrowse Community Forum!

Book Summary and Reviews of In the Valley of the Kings by Terrence Holt

In the Valley of the Kings by Terrence Holt

In the Valley of the Kings

Stories

by Terrence Holt

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Published:
  • Sep 2009, 224 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About this book

Book Summary

A practicing physician, Terrence Holt has written prize-winning stories for publications like TriQuarterly and Zoetrope but has operated, until now, under the literary radar. This collection, which gathers one novella and seven stories written over an entire career, leaps across genres and millennia—from small-town America to the depths of space—exploring the dark corners of human nature in a style that recalls the nineteenth-century American masters and the moral complexity of Conrad. Whether chronicling a plague that ravages a New England town and threatens the human race, an Egyptologist's obsessive quest for a tomb that holds the secrets of immortality, or the anguish of a son who keeps his father's beating heart in a jar, Holt conjures up mysterious worlds in which life joins death in a danse macabre of brilliantly inventive language, wicked wit, and spectacular imagination. A stunning debut by one of our most promising writers.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. This collection represents a life's work of stories that are not well known outside of the readership of literary journals. That's about to change, and it's a good thing." - Library Journal

"Starred Review. This collection, with its allusions to mythology and tragic conundrums, demands intelligence and rewards the reader with Borgesian riches." - Publishers Weekly

"Stories for those who wish to enter enigmatic and uncomfortable spaces." - Kirkus Reviews

"In the Valley of the Kings is a work of terrific intelligence and terrifying imagination." - Aleksandar Hemon, finalist for the National Book Award for The Lazarus Project

"Holt is my favorite writer. Primarily because he's awesome but also (and no less important) because he is sui generis." - Junot Diaz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize - Bookforum

"Like the tales of Poe and Hawthorne, these stories are claustral, eerie and entirely exhilarating." - Michael Gorra, author of The Bells in Their Silence

This information about In the Valley of the Kings was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Terrence Holt Author Biography

Terrence Holt is a writer and an internist specializing in geriatric medicine, teaching and practicing at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Other books by Terrence Holt at BookBrowse
  • Internal Medicine jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more short stories...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Graveyard Shift
    Graveyard Shift
    by M. L. Rio
    Following the success of her debut novel, If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio's latest book is the quasi-...
  • Book Jacket: The Sisters K
    The Sisters K
    by Maureen Sun
    The Kim sisters—Minah, Sarah, and Esther—have just learned their father is dying of ...
  • Book Jacket: Linguaphile
    Linguaphile
    by Julie Sedivy
    From an infant's first attempts to connect with the world around them to the final words shared with...
  • Book Jacket
    The Rest of You
    by Maame Blue
    At the start of Maame Blue's The Rest of You, Whitney Appiah, a Ghanaian Londoner, is ringing in her...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

Courage - a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

F the M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.