Alex

by Adam J. Nicolai, Marc Vietor (Read by)

Overview

Alex was Ian's five-year-old son: brilliant, earnest, and compassionate. He is dead now, but Ian can't let him go. When his wife urges him to move on, he drives her away. His performance at work collapses; his friends leave him. Six months later, alone in an empty house, Ian starts to see his son again.

Every vision is a repeat of something the boy said or did in life: aching memories replaying themselves for Ian's eyes alone. Are these images of Alex real? Has Ian's son found a way back, to forgive or condemn his father? Or has Ian's sorrow metastasized into psychosis?

With a masterful hand, bestselling Kindle Horror author Adam J. Nicolai paints a picture of grief, madness, and the furious strength of a father's love for his son.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781511394635
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	05/03/2016
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 6.75(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Adam J Nicolai lives near Minneapolis, MN with his wife, Joy, and their two children, Isaac and Rydia. He is a life-long nerd, game lover, author, Star Wars fan, Dungeon Master, and amateur game designer, as well as a former policy debate coach. He is currently a Project Manager for a major medical insurance company.

He started writing in elementary school, creating Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style books while he was supposed to be listening in class. His creative expressions widened to include video game design; he filled countless additional notebooks with expansive maps, dialog trees, loot lists, game stats, and mechanics. When he got older he was known to occasionally draft his younger cousin into play-testing, and authored three rule sets for role-playing games (which his gaming peers readily play-tested, in role-playing campaigns that lasted for 5 years or more).

He attended high school at Park Center Senior High, where he had the distinct privilege of being in Brad Olson and Sue Hein's Humanities class, which fostered his love of creative writing and planted a seed that would sprout many years later.

He married his wife, Joy, in 1997. She was seventeen. They promptly moved cross-country together to Washington, DC. Nine months later they decided DC sucked, and moved back to Minnesota, where they have lived happily ever since.

Adam self-published his first novel, Alex, in November, 2011 after becoming disillusioned with the traditional publishing industry.

You will hear more from him.

Editorial Reviews

03/18/2019

At first blush a tense psychological drama, this debut comes undone with a lack of suspense. Grieving father Ian Colmes tries to come to terms with his five-year-old son Alex’s death, which is not easy to do as Alex has been haunting him for the six months since he was murdered. The haunting plagues Ian, spilling over into the rest of his life and further straining the relationship between him and his estranged wife. As Alex’s presence grows more insistent, there is no doubt in Ian’s mind that his son’s phantom is trying to tell him something, and it may be linked to the disappearance of another man’s child. While Nicolai paints a moving portrait of a grief-stricken family, the eventual buildup of suspense is overwrought. Although Ian wrestles with the idea that seeing his dead son may be all in his head, it is established too early that ghosts dictate the course of the plot. Readers will appreciate Nicolai’s atmospheric writing, but may be let down by the predictable twists. (BookLife)

Publishers Weekly