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Ania Ahlborn

Brother Kindle Edition

by Ania Ahlborn (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

1,105 ratings

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From the bestselling horror author of Within These Walls and The Bird Eater comes a terrifying novel that follows a teenager determined to break from his family’s unconventional—and deeply disturbing—traditions.

Deep in the heart of Appalachia stands a crooked farmhouse miles from any road. The Morrows keep to themselves, and it’s served them well so far. When girls go missing off the side of the highway, the cops don’t knock on their door. Which is a good thing, seeing as to what’s buried in the Morrows’ backyard.

But nineteen-year-old Michael Morrow isn’t like the rest of his family. He doesn’t take pleasure in the screams that echo through the trees. Michael pines for normalcy, and he’s sure that someday he’ll see the world beyond West Virginia. When he meets Alice, a pretty girl working at a record shop in the small nearby town of Dahlia, he’s immediately smitten. For a moment, he nearly forgets about the monster he’s become. But his brother, Rebel, is all too eager to remind Michael of his place…

Print length

338 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Gallery Books
Publication date

September 29, 2015
File size

2452 KB
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ania Ahlborn is the bestselling author of the horror thrillers Brother, Within These Walls, The Bird Eater, The Shuddering, The Neighbors, and Seed, and the novellas The Pretty Ones and I Call Upon Thee. Born in Ciechanow, Poland, she lives in South Carolina with her husband and their dog. Visit AniaAhlborn.com or follow the author on Facebook and Twitter @AniaAhlbornAuthor.

Review

“[A] visceral, nihilistic thriller….Ahlborn’s impressive writing and expert exploration of the psychological effects of systemic abuse elevate what could have been the literary equivalent of a slasher flick, and the twist in the final act is jaw-dropping. This relentlessly grim tale is definitely not for the squeamish, but it’s nearly impossible to put down.” ― Publishers Weekly (starred review) --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00P42WZBG
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gallery Books (September 29, 2015)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 29, 2015
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2452 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 338 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 147678373X
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #24,426 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #147 in Horror Suspense
- #863 in Horror (Kindle Store)
- #1,176 in Family Life Fiction (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
1,105 ratings

About the authors

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Ania Ahlborn
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Born in Ciechanow Poland, Ania has always been drawn to the darker, mysterious, and sometimes morbid sides of life. Her earliest childhood memory is of crawling through a hole in the chain link fence that separated her family home from the large wooded cemetery next door. She'd spend hours among the headstones, breaking up bouquets of silk flowers so that everyone had their equal share.
Beyond writing, Ania enjoys cooking, baking, movies, and traveling.
Learn more about Ania on her site, www.AniaAhlborn.com.
Want to connect? Follow Ania on Twitter @aniaahlborn, or find her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/aniaahlborn.
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Ania Ahlborn
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Customer reviews

5 star		61%
4 star		22%
3 star		10%
2 star		3%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Nightmares? Tears?

When do you draw the line of horror that you want to cross?

Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2020

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What makes us Human? Is there a line you will NOT cross while reading horror? Do you ever cross that line? Well, here goes......I CROSSED THAT LINE!

Welcome to the Appalachian town of Dahlia, West Virginia. Now that we know what this town's name is, and what state it is in.....i want to make sure i NEVER go to West Virginia! I know, this is probably a fictionalized and not ever real place, however it always seems that every cannibal, or 'Wrong Turn', or Hills Have Eyes type of story or film, always take place in W. Virginia, hell, even William W. Johnstones' classic horror books of the 80's (which this is based in the late 70's and early 80) take place there!

Michael Morrow (not his real last name,) was only 4 years old when he was snatched up out of his front yard while playing by the members of the Morror family. Now this family is not your every day run of the mill family looking for a child to kidnap and sell for money.......NO! This is a family who takes a boy to train him to 'work' with the family and raise him in the family's sick and twisted state of mind, and ways of living........keeping their Mama, Claudine happy. The way they do this is finding, and bringing pretty young girls home to the farmhouse to gut, hang by their heels in the barn, then take apart and slaughter like a butcher does a cow, to feed and keep their Mama satisfied!! Yes! Now as michael starts growing as a young boy he starts to realize that something inside him makes him think that he is not like his older brother, Reb, (short for Rebel) or like his sister Misty Dawn.....he just knows he does not belong in this family. But that does not stop him from learning the ways of the family, the ways to make people think that he is 'just like every other boy in town', and to learn the perfect way to string up a 'Whore, they are all whores' says Claudine, and to feed his family of hillbillies that call themselves the Morrows of Dahlia.

This book was written by a young woman, and yes, though at times i wanted to put it down and not go on, because i do draw the line when it comes to this kind of sadistic, absolutely sick and twisted form of reading material, but for some sick reasoning, i wanted to see where young Michaels life was going to go, and what would become of him as a young man.

When he is in his early years of manhood around the age of 17 he discovers his first 'feelings for a girl' and though he has always been taught to think they are just things that will go away, he starts to realize that his family of killers that have raised him as their own, are actually sick cannibalistic killers, and he must tell someone. He meets two young girls at a record store while in town with his brother Reb, and he gets drawn into the web of a spider that he has no ways of knowing how to get out of. Does he tell Alice and Lucy what his family 'does for a living', does he tell them of what the chains and tools that are in the basement of the farmhouse are for?

'Brother' is beyond anything you will read i think, if you have never read 'Girl Next Door' or seen a movie like the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.......yes, this book is what, if it had been written in 1972, I believe this is what Tobe Hooper would have used as a basis for his movie that is now the 'Classic horror classic of the 70s'. I give this 5 stars as a rating, but that does not mean i LOVED what i read, I didnt, it made me sick to my stomach to think that i even wanted to admit to myself that i was reading or listening to this disgusting portrayal of a family beyond description! Just be warned: This book deals with extreme torture, cannibalism, incest, necrophilia, and descriptions of body dismemberment and disemboweling in EXTREMELY realistic details, and there is a lot of it.

Now, i must cleanse my state of mind and palette for the sick taste it left in my mouth, and start another book for all of your Book Review Pleasure! Thanks for taking the time to read this. Check out the video review of this book on my YouTube Channel; AreYouIntoHorror. Thanks,
Richard.

15 people found this helpful

Helpful

This book will haunt you

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2020

Verified Purchase

I knew the premise of this book going in. It's no spoiler to say this book centers on a character, Michael, who is a member of a family of serial killers and that the story hinges on his struggle to reconcile his own thoughts with what his family does. As such, I expected a bloody and violent horror story. In that, I wasn't disappointed, but I'm immeasurably pleased that the book, while it is violent, while it is bloody, while it does have plenty of extreme horror, is also a surprisingly deep and often moving character study.

The writing is simple and concise enough to fade into the background and allow the reader to fully immerse him/herself in a story that's gripping from beginning to end, both during scenes of truly horrific violence and during introspective interludes. But it's the psychology behind the story that really makes it shine. You will find yourself experiencing a lot of conflicting emotions as you struggle to reconcile the different sides of characters whose motivations are not always immediately clear (to the reader and sometimes even to themselves).

Upon finishing this book, I found myself thinking about two of history's great thinkers. Tolstoy observed that all happy families are alike but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own unique way. Nowhere is that more explicitly on display than in the relationships between the family members in this book. What's particularly horrifying is that, though the acts of violence depicted are likely alien to the vast majority of readers, I suspect many of us see hints of our own familial dysfunction beneath the surface of these characters. The idea that characters whose acts are so monstrous bear any similarity to ourselves and our own families is terrifying, and that terror is at the heart of what makes this book so stunning and, indeed, haunting. You'll likely find these characters keep creeping back into your thoughts from time to time long after you've finished reading it.

And then there's Aristotle, who told us that the endings of stories should seem simultaneously surprising and inevitable. And, moving on to a discussion of plot (as opposed to character), that's certainly what we find here. I won't spoil anything, but I will say that I was genuinely surprised by some of this book's turns, and often felt that they were SO inevitable that I should have seen them coming. That I didn't is a testament to the book's ability to pull the reader in. The author seems to have a magician's skill at misdirection, and the reader always feels on shaky ground when it comes to predicting the book's outcome. Admittedly, I got about a chapter ahead of the author on just a few of the twists and turns, but I was nevertheless both surprised and satisfied by most of the plot.

I'll be the first to acknowledge that this isn't the book for everyone. Those of us who prefer "quieter" (or at least less bloody and extreme) horror could easily feel overwhelmed by some of the things that happen in this book, even if the focus is more on character than on the acts of violence themselves. That having been said, if you have the stomach for the more extreme scenes, you owe it to yourself to read this book.

17 people found this helpful

Helpful

Gema D

A binge worthy and addictive thriller

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2021

Verified Purchase

“He only wished momma would kill them while the sun was shining rather than waiting ‘til dark [...] Day or night, dead was dead”.

How do you turn out when you are raised in a family full of serial killers? When your momma strikes you out of anger at any moment and your brother is an absolute horror. This book is just about that and Michaels story. Swipe to see #goodreads synopsis.

The first couple of pages was enough for this book to fully grab my undivided attention. I was stunned with the cinematic horror and suspense that I was reading. It was like a bad car wreck (but in a good way), when you know you shouldn't stare. But, you just can't stop! In this case the storyline is so gruesome that you just can't stop reading it. I was fascinated by the continuous twists that kept being revealed in subtle ways. I was at the edge of my seat the entire time I was reading, GEEZ!

Then, that ending which left me in a state of shock and heartbroken!

I loved this book! It is well deserving to be adapted into a horror film.

Trigger Warnings: Gruesome violence, blood shed, child abuse, and possible triggering family dynamics.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Natframpton

Amazing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 4, 2015

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This is going to be difficult…how do I write a review on this book that has just blown me away. A book that made me smile, gasp and cry.

I’m going to give it a go.

I will start by saying the description does this book no justice what so ever . If it wasn’t for the recommendation then I probably wouldn’t of picked it up. This book is a horror movie, a horror movie but with characters you really feel invested in, characters who you hate with a passion and those who you are scared but hopeful for.

Michael is our main character a poor boy brought into a horrible family and has no choice in what he’s been made to do. He is such a strong person but he wouldn’t think so himself. He stands up for himself and others when possible against some of the most horrible characters I’ve read about. He is also quiet and naive which stems I think from the way his family have treated him for years.

Michael meets Alex in a record shop whilst on an outing with his brother. Straight away he is drawn to her and he starts to think life away from the family is possible. Alex is also drawn to Michael because he is quiet compared to his brother Reb (Ray) who is in your face and bold.

Rebel (Ray) is Michaels older brother and is one twisted individual, I don’t even know or comprehend how someone turns out like him. There are just no words.

The world Ania Ahlborn has created is one I don’t want to live in, because she described it so perfectly. Michael stands at his bedroom window and looks over their farm and I can see it so perfectly in my mind, I don’t know how she did it, but she did.

I was never expecting the ending I got and if I’m honest its one of the best endings I’ve ever read.

This book needs reading …and right now.. I want you to put down whatever your doing and pick up this book instead.

If anyone has read this book please comment so we can talk about it!! I need to talk about it !!

8 people found this helpful

Sophia

Wow.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 10, 2020

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This was all shades of messed up! I had no idea what to expect when I started this book, it was dark, twisted and gritty! Two days it took me to read this book. I was so engrossed i had to, no needed to know what happened next and boy was i shocked!

2 people found this helpful

Donna

Amazingly tortured tale

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 12, 2020

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Such a great story well written and gut wrenching I did see where this was going but i still enjoyed the journey. Truly a great read.

2 people found this helpful

Neuro2014

Wow

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 11, 2020

Verified Purchase

Brother is the first book I have read by this author and if I could I would have given it 3.5 stars. As much as it twists it's way through a sick and depraved story of still keeps you turning the pages!

One person found this helpful

Webby

Not bad

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 29, 2020

Verified Purchase

I made it to the end anyway which is more than can be said for a few books I've picked up lately. Felt a bit drawn out at times and Michael's weakness annoyed me a bit. I liked the beginning and end but the middle was padded out I thought.

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