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KIND OF CRUEL

by Sophie Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 6, 2013

Back and forth shifts in time and the multiple narrators may confound and alienate readers.

British writer Hannah, who specializes in psychological thrillers, continues her series centered around two married police detectives, officers Simon Waterhouse and Charlie Zailer.

Amber Hewerdine visits a hypnotherapist seeking help sleeping at night. Although a skeptic, she’s been suffering from insomnia for so long that she’s desperate for a good night’s sleep. While there, the acerbic Amber meets Zailer, a police officer who is halfheartedly trying to quit smoking. Through a confusing series of events, Amber says several odd things to the hypnotherapist, including the words, “Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel.” Those words have special significance to both Waterhouse and Zailer since their imprint was found on a pad of paper discovered at the murder scene where Katharine Allen, a primary teacher, was discovered bludgeoned to death. Waterhouse immediately sees the significance of Amber knowing this unreleased detail and has a fellow officer bring her in for questioning. Amber has a strange past of her own: Her best friend, Sharon, was killed in a fire, and she has custody of the woman’s two small daughters, who escaped the blaze. Add to this a peculiar extended family, an odd night that took place in a rented house and another fire, then mix in some bizarre police work, and you'll get Hannah's sometimes-confusing, overly complex tale. Part of the problem is that Hannah peoples her story with unlikable characters: The police officers spend most of their time stomping around, name-calling and screaming about office politics and their personal lives.

Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-670-78585-8

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: May 20, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013

SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE

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Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SCIENCE FICTION

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by Max Brooks

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BOOK TO SCREEN

Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2015

PRETTY GIRLS

by Karin Slaughter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 29, 2015

Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...

Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.

The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.

Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE | PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER

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KIND OF CRUEL

Some secrets are so dark you keep them even from yourself . . .

When Amber Hewerdine consults a hypnotherapist as a desperate last resort, she doesn’t expect that anything much will change.

She doesn’t expect it to help with her chronic insomnia . . .

She doesn’t expect to hear herself, under hypnosis, saying words that mean nothing to her: ‘Kind, cruel, kind of cruel’ – words she has seen somewhere before, if only she could remember where . . .

She doesn’t expect to be arrested two hours later, as a result of having spoken those words out loud, in connection with the brutal murder of Katharine Allen, a woman she’s never heard of . . .

#7   IN THE WATERHOUSE & ZAILER CRIME SERIES Latest Editions: Paperback/eBook/Audio READING GROUP QUESTIONS

by Hodder Books | Kind of Cruel

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“An exploration of memory and the way trauma lives on in the present. Cool, calculating and utterly chilling, Kind of Cruel is another compulsive book from Hannah, to be gulped down with all the lights on and someone to grab when the sense of menace grows too great.” Observer

“[Hannah] has outdone herself with Kind Of Cruel …Her trademark precision-layered structure creates a multi-dimensional maze that holds at its centre a revelation which is truly hair-raising, even by Hannah’s standards.” Independent on Sunday

“A rich mix of the dark and the diverting.   Brilliantly believable.” Sunday Times

“An audacious puzzle of a novel that is impossible to second guess. There are clues on virtually every page but only when you reach the final chapter does it become apparent how they slot together.   Crime novels are often dismissed in literary circles for not being literary enough. Yet Kind Of Cruel is exactly the intelligent, reflective and stunningly written novel that has “literary” critics swooning and judging panels lining up to reward. The fact that it has a police investigation at its heart is a plus, not a minus, and makes for one hell of a journey.” Sunday Express

“Hannah excels at dissecting human behaviour, and the way she describes little acts of cruelty can send real chills down the spine.” Psychologies magazine

“Hannah’s classy psychological thrillers are known for their amazing openings and this one is a doozy. She proceeds to mix, with superb skill, the utterly gripping first person narration of Amber as she tries to grapple with the myriad mysteries in her life, plus the investigations of her regular detective duo.  The plot developments are often jaw-dropping and the ending is wonderfully satisfying. Another triumph for one of the very best crime writers out there. Stunningly clever and compelling.” Heat

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Kind of Cruel by Sophie Hannah – review

A mother who insists her daughter has been substituted for another baby. A man who confesses to the murder of someone who's still alive. And now an insomniac who blurts out the words: "Kind, cruel, kind of cruel" under hypnosis, only to find herself arrested two hours later for the murder of a stranger.

From her debut Little Face to her most recent bestseller Lasting Damage , Sophie Hannah, a successful poet for years before she moved into thrillers in 2006, has specialised in impossible scenarios and darkly twisted psyches, focusing on the psychological rather than the physical and delighting in presenting her readers with unguessable twists. Her seventh outing, Kind of Cruel , opens with insomniac Amber Hewerdine, sceptical but desperate, visiting a hypnotherapist. Amber can't understand why in her session she utters the words: "Kind, cruel, kind of cruel", but she's sure it must have been because she saw them on the notepad of the woman in the waiting room outside. The woman is still there when she leaves, and so she asks her. But it turns out to be Charlie Zailer, a cop, who knows the words were scribbled on a pad in the room of the brutally murdered Katharine Allen, a killing to which the police can find no motive, no clues, no leads at all. And so Amber is arrested.

As with her previous thrillers, Kind of Cruel sees Hannah flit between voices – here moving from the sleep-deprived but incisively intelligent "I" of Amber to the third-person perspectives of her regular team of mismatched, dysfunctional coppers. Part of the pleasure of reading Hannah lies in the way she catches the singularity of her characters, from Charlie's effusive sister, Liv, whose "collar and cuffs… look oddly inflated and puffed up, as if someone's injected them with the clothes equivalent of Botox", to the wonderfully awful boss Proust, who lectures a subordinate: "Pathetic, Waterhouse. That's not me talking, it's your inner voice. I'd attempt the accent, only I don't speak low self-esteem. It's a language I've never needed to learn."

But Kind of Cruel isn't just about the cops. Through its slow unspooling of Amber's past, it also becomes an exploration of memory and the way trauma lives on in the present. Cool, calculating and utterly chilling, Kind of Cruel is another compulsive book from Hannah, to be gulped down with all the lights on and someone to grab when the sense of menace grows too great.

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Kind of Cruel: A Novel Hardcover – Aug. 6 2013

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Amber Hewerdine suffers from chronic insomnia. As a last resort, she visits a hypnotherapist, doubtful that anything will really change. Under hypnosis, Amber hears herself saying, “Kind, cruel, kind of cruel.” The words awaken a vague memory, but she dismisses the whole episode as nonsense. Two hours later, however, Amber is arrested for the brutal murder of a woman she’s never heard of, and the only way she can clear her name is by remembering exactly where she’s seen those words.    Kind of Cruel is the latest page-turner in Hannah's Zailer and Waterhouse mystery series, and will enthrall Hannah’s ever-growing readership.

• Book 7 of 9 A Zailer & Waterhouse Mystery
• Print length 448 pages
• Language English
• Publisher G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Publication date Aug. 6 2013
• Dimensions 15.88 x 3.48 x 23.8 cm
• ISBN-10 0670785857
• ISBN-13 978-0670785858
• See all details

Product description

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ G.P. Putnam's Sons (Aug. 6 2013)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0670785857
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0670785858
• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 658 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.88 x 3.48 x 23.8 cm

About the author

Sophie hannah.

Hello! Welcome to my Amazon Author Page, and thank you for your interest in me and my books. Below you will find my official biog and all my online links so that you can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. You'll also find a link to my Dream Author Coaching Programme for writers, which launched in September 2019.

Oh, and you can see some cute photos of my amazing dog Brewster on this page too! He often leaps onto my laptop while I'm writing and deletes entire paragraphs by accident - so you could say he's a regular contributor to my literary efforts!

If you would like to receive my monthly newsletter (in which I give away freebies and share scandal, gossip and intrigue) you can sign up at the bottom of the home page of my website, sophiehannah.com. And if you want to contact me directly (to say you've loved a book of mine, or even to complain vociferously about one of my books), email [email protected]. I'm always delighted to hear from my readers!

My Official Biography is as follows:

Sophie Hannah is an internationally bestselling crime fiction writer whose books have sold millions of copies worldwide. Her crime novels have been translated into 49 languages and published in 51 countries. Her psychological thriller The Carrier won the Crime Thriller of the Year Award at the 2013 UK National Book Awards. In 2014 and 2016, Sophie published The Monogram Murders and Closed Casket, the first new Hercule Poirot mysteries since Agatha Christie's death, both of which were national and international bestsellers. She went on to publish a third, The Mystery of Three Quarters in 2018 which was an instant bestseller, and her fourth Poirot novel, The Killings at Kingfisher Hill will be published in August 2020. Sophie helped to create a Master’s Degree in Crime and Thriller Writing at the University of Cambridge, for which she is the main teacher and Course Director. She is also the founder of the Dream Author Coaching Programme for writers which launched in September 2019.

Sophie is also an award-winning, bestselling poet, and her poetry is studied at GCSE level across the UK. She has co-written two murder mystery musicals with composer Annette Armitage: The Mystery of Mr. E and Work Experience. She has written a self-help book called How To Hold a Grudge: From Resentment to Contentment - The Power of Grudges to Transform Your Life, and hosts the How to Hold a Grudge podcast.

Sophie lives with her husband, children and dog in Cambridge, where she is an Honorary Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College.

And I can be found online here:

Website: www.sophiehannah.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/sophiehannahauthor/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/sophiehannahwriter/

Twitter: www.twitter.com/sophiehannahCB1

http://dreamauthorcoaching.com

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/how-to-hold-a-grudge/id1439465411

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, kind of cruel.

• About the Book

Amber Hewerdine suffers from chronic insomnia. As a last resort, she visits a hypnotherapist, doubtful that anything will really change. Under hypnosis, Amber hears herself saying, “Kind, cruel, kind of cruel.” The words awaken a vague memory, but she dismisses the whole episode as nonsense. Two hours later, however, Amber is arrested for the brutal murder of a woman she’s never heard of, and the only way she can clear her name is by remembering exactly where she’s seen those words.    KIND OF CRUEL is the latest page-turner in Hannah's Zailer and Waterhouse mystery series, and will enthrall Hannah’s ever-growing readership.

Kind of Cruel by Sophie Hannah

• Publication Date: August 26, 2014
• Genres: Fiction , Psychological Suspense , Psychological Thriller , Suspense , Thriller
• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• ISBN-10: 0143124625
• ISBN-13: 9780143124627

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Book Review: Kind of Cruel

…by Sophie Hannah .

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Writer | Psychologist | Feminist | Imperfect | Bibliophile | Rock chick | Thalassophile | Powerlifting enthusiast | Coffee Snob | Craft beer lover | Red wine drinker | Owned by 2 cats

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Seяendipity

I’m gonna buy it. 🙂 And how to update the status on the ‘GoodReads 2012 challenge’ ? I mean how does it get updated about how many books we have read ?

Psych Babbler™

Do…you’ll like it! And the Goodreads challenge updates on the website once you mark a book as read but on the blog, you need to keep updating the widget. Only just realised that after your comment!

I’ve never read one of her books and they sound right up my ally! Thanks for sharing.

She’s definitely got some out there psychological thrillers which are enjoyable Janine…

Kind of Cruel

Sophie hannah. putnam, $26.95 (384p) isbn 978-0-670-78585-8.

Reviewed on: 06/17/2013

Genre: Fiction

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Book Review: Kind of Cruel by Sophie Hannah

GENERAL INFORMATION

TITLE: KIND OF CRUEL

AUTHOR: SOPHIE HANNAH

PUBLISHER: HODDER HEADLINE

GENRE: CRIME FICTION

COVER TYPE: PAPER BACK

www.goodreads.com/book/show/13034606-kind-of-cruel

www.sophiehannah.com

Kind of Cruel is a library book.

BLURB FROM THE COVER  

Amber Hewerdine knows more than she is telling. She knows that she hasn’t slept since the arson attack that killed her best friend.   

She knows that it is not normal for four members of your family to disappear without warning or explanation one Christmas morning, and then to return two days later and never speak of it again. And she knows that somewhere, buried deep in her subconscious, is the key to what happened all those years ago at Little Orchard.  

Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel.   

These are the words Amber keeps coming back to. But what do they mean? And why is she arrested within hours of saying them, for the murder of a woman she’s never heard of…

EXTRACT  

Look: there is nothing special about this place. Look at the gaps between the bricks and the gateposts, where the pointing has fallen out. Look at the ugly UPVC window frames. This is not the place where miracles happen.

I like the way Hannah structures Kind of Cruel . She uses a similar method to Point of Rescue . The point of view alternates between chapters. Some chapters are told ion the first person from Amber’s perspective. Alternating chapters are written in the third person from the viewpoint of the police officers investigating the murder of Kat Allen. Amber’s chapters have a long date heading (i.e. 3 November 2008). The other chapters had a short date heading (i.e. 3/11/08). I think this structure worked really well. It was easy to follow all the changing characters and viewpoints. There was also the odd chapter that was supposed to be an extract from the case notes of Ginny, Amber’s hypnotherapist.

Kind of Cruel is a very compelling, fast-paced read. I turned the pages at a rapid speed. Kind of Cruel is the kind of novel that leaves the reader with scores of questions. Why killed Amber’s best friend? What do the words Amber says under hypnosis mean? Who murdered Kat Allen? Why did Jo, Amber’s sister in law and her family vanish on Christmas day and return a day later and refuse to speak of the event again? Hannah drips feeds you the answers as you read but also adds even more questions. Kind of Cruel kept me guessing until the end.

The strongest characters in Kind of Cruel were Amber and her sister-in-law, Jo. They were both very complex and interesting. I liked the way Hannah explored memory through Amber. Amber has had insomnia since her best friend was murdered in an arson attack and she became guardian to her two children. This has screwed up her memory. The words she says during hypnosis, cruel, kind, kind of cruel are familiar and she becomes obsessed with learning their origin. Jo was my favourite character even though she was so unpleasant. The hypnotherapist, without speaking to her diagnoses her as having as narcissistic personality disorder. She’s certainly a nasty person. She verbally abuses Amber at every turn and acts like a total nutter, disappearing in the middle of the night with her whole family.

Hannah drops plenty hints that the murder of Kat Allen and Amber’s best friend are linked but does not reveal this connection until the end. I had no idea what the link was. Kat Allen and Amber’s best friend did not know each other. Kat Allen was a stranger. I was shocked when it all fell into place.

LOWLIGHTS  

Amber and Jo were great characters. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the rest of them. There are too many characters for a start and Hannah doesn’t spend enough time developing them so a lot of them are interchangeable.

I had a good idea who the villain was before Hannah revealed this. There were hints throughout Kind of Cruel of whom Amber suspected and why she suspected. I agreed with her and think Hannah made it far too easy for the character to be a suspect. She didn’t pull the wool over my eyes enough.

There is a four page extract from Ginny, the hypnotherapists note at the end. The note is addressed to Charlie, one of the police officers who’s concerned about her husband’s inability to have sex. Ginny speculates he experienced ‘emotional incest’. This section had really no point and should have been cut completely.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I really enjoyed Kind of Cruel . Hannah is another writer I want to read more of. The novel had a few weak areas but these weren’t bad enough to put me off. Kind of Cruel is well-written, fast paced and thoroughly enjoyable.

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A Zailer & Waterhouse Mystery

Sophie Hannah

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ISBN: 0670785857

ISBN13: 9780670785858

Kind of Cruel

(book #7 in the spilling cid series ).

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"Brilliantly executed psychological suspense" (Booklist, starred review) from the bestselling author of The Wrong Mother When Amber Hewerdine consults a hypnotherapist as a desperate last resort, she... This description may be from another edition of this product.

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Kind of Cruel: A Zailer and Waterhouse Mystery (A Zailer & Waterhouse Mystery #7)

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“Brilliantly executed psychological suspense” ( Booklist , starred review) from the bestselling author of The Wrong Mother When Amber Hewerdine consults a hypnotherapist as a desperate last resort, she doesn't expect that anything much will change.   She doesn't expect it to help with her chronic insomnia. She doesn't expect to hear herself, under hypnosis, saying words that mean nothing to her: 'Kind, cruel, kind of cruel' - words she has seen somewhere before, if only she could remember where. She doesn't expect to be arrested two hours later, as a result of having spoken those words out loud, in connection with the brutal murder of Katharine Allen, a woman she's never heard of . . .   Kind of Cruel is the 7th book in Hannah’s acclaimed Zailer & Waterhouse series. Charlie and Simon have just gotten married, but domestic bliss is proving rather illusive, not least because Charlie ends up in Simon’s investigation as a witness. Charlie’s sister Liv is still sleeping with Gibbs, making Simon’s work life complicated and irritating Charlie to no end. And Simon’s boss and adversary, The Snowman, is still being generally horrible. Featuring all the Spilling PD characters fans know and love, Sophie Hannah’s trademark dark, twisty plot will keep readers guessing until the very end.

About the Author

Sophie Hannah is the bestselling author of nine novels and is also an award-winning poet. Her Hercule Poirot mystery, the first to be sanctioned by the Agatha Christie estate, was published in 2014. She lives in Cambridge, England, with her husband and two children, and is a Fellow Commoner at Lucy Cavendish College.

Praise for Kind of Cruel: A Zailer and Waterhouse Mystery (A Zailer & Waterhouse Mystery #7)

Praise for Kind of Cruel “Kind of Cruel is meticulously constructed, its characters are memorable, and its tone delicately balances the book’s deadly serious (and not for the faint of heart) storyline against some unexpected humor.” – The Seattle Times “Calling this plot serpentine doesn’t do it justice.” – The Toronto Star “Hannah spins a dark tale of a woman haunted by subconscious memories.” – Library Journal “Addictive” – PW  “This is [a] brilliantly executed psychological suspense with a complex plot brought to a horribly logical conclusion.” – Booklist (starred review) “Kind of Cruel is a top-notch psychological thriller that will provide many sleepless nights of reading for those who venture in.” – Bookreporter “Nearly impossible to unravel until its final pages, Hannah’s intricate, multi-voice narrative explores the elusive, malleable nature of memory as played out in a baffling criminal investigation involving some odd remembered words and the brutal death of a stranger.” – Brooklyn Daily Eagle “An exploration of memory and the way trauma lives on in the present. Cool, calculating and utterly chilling, Kind of Cruel is another compulsive book from Hannah, to be gulped down with all the lights on and someone to grab when the sense of menace grows too great.” – The Observer (London)     “[Hannah] has outdone herself with Kind Of Cruel …Her trademark precision-layered structure creates a multi-dimensional maze that holds at its centre a revelation which is truly hair-raising, even by Hannah's standards.” – Independent on Sunday (London) “An audacious puzzle of a novel that is impossible to second guess. There are clues on virtually every page but only when you reach the final chapter does it become apparent how they slot together….Crime novels are often dismissed in literary circles for not being literary enough. Yet Kind Of Cruel is exactly the intelligent, reflective and stunningly written novel that has “literary” critics swooning and judging panels lining up to reward. The fact that it has a police investigation at its heart is a plus, not a minus, and makes for one hell of a journey.” – Sunday Express (London)

Other Books in Series

The Truth-Teller's Lie: A Zailer and Waterhouse Mystery (A Zailer & Waterhouse Mystery #2)

Little Face: A Zailer and Waterhouse Mystery (A Zailer & Waterhouse Mystery #1)

The Other Woman's House: A Zailer and Waterhouse Mystery (A Zailer & Waterhouse Mystery #6)

The Dead Lie Down: A Zailer and Waterhouse Mystery (A Zailer & Waterhouse Mystery #4)

The Wrong Mother: A Zailer and Waterhouse Mystery (A Zailer & Waterhouse Mystery #3)

The Cradle in the Grave: A Zailer and Waterhouse Mystery (A Zailer & Waterhouse Mystery #5)

The Carrier: A Zailer and Waterhouse Mystery (A Zailer & Waterhouse Mystery #8)

The Carrier (Zailer and Waterhouse Mystery)

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Donald Trump's Nephew Says He Told Him Disabled Americans, Including Fred III's Own Son, 'Should Just Die'

Fred Trump III also claims in a new memoir that his uncle used the n-word behind closed doors

Andrew Savulich/NY Daily News Archive via Getty; Joe Raedle/Getty

Donald Trump 's nephew Fred Trump III claims that the former president once told him that disabled Americans — including Fred III's own son — "should just die" due to "expenses" and "the shape they're in."

Fred C. Trump III — the son of Trump's late brother Fred Trump Jr. — makes the claim in his new memoir,  All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way , which is set for release on July 30 and was excerpted by Time on Wednesday, July 24. In another excerpt of Fred Trump III's book, published in The Guardian , the former president's nephew claims that Donald freely used racist language — including the n-word — in conversation with family members.

Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung called the book's allegations false, claiming without evidence that all such reports have been "debunked."

"This is completely fabricated and total fake news of the highest order," Cheung said in a statement to PEOPLE. "It is appalling a lie so blatantly disgusting can be printed in media. Anyone who knows President Trump knows he would never use such language, and false stories like this have been thoroughly debunked."

In the excerpt published by Time , Fred details how he visited his uncle, then the president of the United States, in May 2020, to discuss his son William, who was born with a KCNQ2 mutation, "a genetic misfire that the doctors called a potassium channel deletion."

Fred, 61, writes that he had assumed the meeting would be "a quick handshake hello," but it evolved into "a 45-minute discussion in the Oval Office" with Trump, 78, disability advocates, and then-Sec. of Health and Human Services Alex Azar.

"I thought [Donald] had been touched by what the doctor and advocates in the meeting had just shared about their journey with their patients and their own family members. But I was wrong," Fred III writes in the excerpt published by Time.

" 'Those people . . . 'Donald said, trailing off. 'The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.' "

Elsewhere in the book, Fred recounts how he visited Donald at Briarcliff Manor, home of the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester, N.Y., later that year, and mentioned that his son's medical fund — to which Donald had historically contributed — was running low. He mentioned that they "may need some help," financially.

Donald's response, according to Fred, was: “I don’t know. He doesn’t recognize you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.”

In a different passage published in The Guardian, Fred writes of “just a normal afternoon for preteen me" when his uncle showed up to a family gathering and "was pissed."

Shannon Stapleton-Pool/Getty

Showing him a long gash in his white Cadillac Eldorado convertible, Donald then allegedly said, “N******. Look at what the n****** did," per the book.

Trump's nephew is not the only one to claim that Trump has used the n-word behind closed doors.

Bill Pruitt, an unscripted television producer who worked on the first two seasons of Trump's NBC reality show, told  Slate  that the former president used the word to describe one of his first-ever finalists on  The Apprentice , Kwame Jackson.

Never miss a story — sign up for  PEOPLE's free daily newsletter  to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

When previously reached by PEOPLE for comment about Pruitt's claims, Cheung brushed Pruitt's allegations off as "fake news."

Never miss a story — sign up for  PEOPLE's free daily newsletter  to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories

Trump also has been accused of mocking the disabled in the past, and in a 2017 campaign rally, seemingly imitated the appearance of a disabled  New York Times  reporter .

Following outcry over the moment, Trump insisted that, rather than mocking reporter Serge F. Kovaleski — who has a congenital joint condition called arthrogryposis that limits flexibility in his arms — for his disability, he was actually doing an impression of Kovaleski “groveling.”

Those close to Trump — including his own chief of staff, retired four-star Gen. John Kelly — have also claimed that the former president has mocked injured service members. A 2020 article by  The Atlantic cited numerous sources who claimed that Trump called U.S. soldiers "losers" and "suckers" during a 2018 trip to Paris when he canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery.

In a statement issued in 2023 to CNN, Kelly did little to dispute those reports, describing Trump as "a person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.' "

Trump has claimed he did not make the remarks, though he has publicly and repeatedly criticized the late Sen. John McCain, a Republican who was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for more than five years.

Trump, who  received a deferment from the military draft , has called McCain "a loser," and said of his capture: "Does being captured make you a hero? I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

During 2016 Republican presidential primary, Trump doubled down on those comments, saying of McCain: “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

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Nephew Says Trump Suggested Some Disabled People ‘Should Just Die’

In a new memoir, Fred C. Trump III claims his uncle, Donald J. Trump, made cruel and racist comments.

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By Shawn McCreesh

In 2020, a few months before the last election, former President Donald J. Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, published a book about her uncle and how awful and psychologically warped she found him to be. At the time, her brother, Fred C. Trump III, put out a statement slamming his sister for such treachery.

Now, he’s wielding the knife. Next week, he will publish “All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got to Be This Way,” a tell-all that puts the former president in a harsh light. The New York Times obtained a copy.

Fred and Mary Trump are the children of Fred Trump Jr., Donald’s older brother who struggled with alcoholism and died of a heart attack in 1981, when he was 42.

Fred Trump, 61, describes himself as fairly close to his uncle. He attended the 2017 inauguration (he writes that he had a better seat than John McCain) and visited the White House several times (the book includes a picture of its author sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office).

Once, while in the Oval Office, the elder Mr. Trump insisted that his nephew stay in the room for a phone call he was about to have with King Abdullah of Jordan. He put the call on speakerphone, so his nephew could hear the king thank Mr. Trump for killing an Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. “I killed him,” the former president boasted in front of his nephew, according to the book. “I killed him like a dog.”

But another White House meeting left the author with a chill, and, it is implied, the reason for writing the book.

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Kind of Cruel: A Novel (A Zailer & Waterhouse Mystery) Hardcover – August 6, 2013

Amber Hewerdine suffers from chronic insomnia. As a last resort, she visits a hypnotherapist, doubtful that anything will really change. Under hypnosis, Amber hears herself saying, “Kind, cruel, kind of cruel.” The words awaken a vague memory, but she dismisses the whole episode as nonsense. Two hours later, however, Amber is arrested for the brutal murder of a woman she’s never heard of, and the only way she can clear her name is by remembering exactly where she’s seen those words.    Kind of Cruel is the latest page-turner in Hannah's Zailer and Waterhouse mystery series, and will enthrall Hannah’s ever-growing readership.

• Book 7 of 9 A Zailer & Waterhouse Mystery
• Print length 448 pages
• Language English
• Publisher G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Publication date August 6, 2013
• Dimensions 6.25 x 1.37 x 9.37 inches
• ISBN-10 0670785857
• ISBN-13 978-0670785858
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com review, essay by sophie hannah: beware of psychological knives.

Researching my seventh psychological thriller, Kind of Cruel , I realized I was psychologically illiterate. The plot of Kind of Cruel involves hypnotherapy, and I’d never been hypnotized. I was planning to go for one session, but the hypnotherapist took one look at me, decided I was a little on the screwed-up side, and signed me up for fifteen sessions of “hypnoanalysis.” I quickly became aware that, dysfunctional as I undoubtedly was, I was far from fluent in the language of psychological dysfunction. I’d fancied myself an expert, and yet I didn’t know how to recognize a textbook narcissist, or an emotional energy vampire. I didn’t know what enmeshment was, or codependency, or enabling, or triangulation. So, while I wrote Kind of Cruel , I simultaneously read lots of books with titles like Healing the Shame That Binds You , Trapped in the Mirror , and Toxic Parents and How to Survive Their Hurtful Legacy . (I had to hide that last one when my nearest and dearest visited, for obvious reasons!) All of these books were fascinating, and they taught me a lot. For forty years, I realized, I’d done my best to make myself understood from a position of psychological illiteracy. I’d relied on phrases like “Whenever I’m with her, I feel as if I’m suffocating” and “There’s something kind of off about him.” Suddenly, I had a whole new vocabulary at my disposal. I could identify people who posed a psychological threat, and I often found that I knew the right word for the threat they posed.

Imagine if we could all recognize a codependent narcissist as easily as a knife. If someone runs at you holding a knife, you’re immediately aware of the danger. You have the concepts and vocabulary you need. You think, “Knife—help—imminent, hideous death!” and you run. Also, you can be confident that the police will be familiar with the language of physical threat and understand the implications of “He came at me with a knife.” Everyone knows what a knife is, means, and is called. Same with a bomb. If someone lobbed a bomb at you and you thought, “What a pretty round thingie,” and didn’t run away, you’d get blown up. That’s the situation most of us are in, psychologically. Say to the world at large, “He came at me with enmeshment,” and you’ll meet with baffled looks. Most of us don’t know what that and other such terms mean, and I’d guess that a lot of people suspect they mean nothing, that American shrinks have made them up. As a skeptical Brit, I firmly believe that this is not the case. I’ve known enmeshment in Edinburgh, codependence in Coventry, narcissism in Newbury, triangulation in Truro. Okay, I’ve altered details for the sake of alliteration, but the point is still valid. This isn’t something that applies only to people in L.A. From Dagenham to Doncaster to Dundee, diagnosis is the key. Believe me, nothing scares off a damaged and damaging psyche as quickly or efficiently as the threat of diagnosis.

I’m currently reading Healing the Child Within . Partly as research, and partly because I’m still only at kindergarten level when it comes to diagnosing psychological dysfunction. One day, I hope, I’ll be an expert!

From Publishers Weekly

From booklist, about the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ G.P. Putnam's Sons; 0 edition (August 6, 2013)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0670785857
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0670785858
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.45 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1.37 x 9.37 inches
• #19,806 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
• #34,001 in Psychological Thrillers (Books)
• #99,441 in Suspense Thrillers

About the author

Sophie hannah.

Hello! Welcome to my Amazon Author Page, and thank you for your interest in me and my books. Below you will find my official biog and all my online links so that you can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. You'll also find a link to my Dream Author Coaching Programme for writers, which launched in September 2019.

Oh, and you can see some cute photos of my amazing dog Brewster on this page too! He often leaps onto my laptop while I'm writing and deletes entire paragraphs by accident - so you could say he's a regular contributor to my literary efforts!

If you would like to receive my monthly newsletter (in which I give away freebies and share scandal, gossip and intrigue) you can sign up at the bottom of the home page of my website, sophiehannah.com. And if you want to contact me directly (to say you've loved a book of mine, or even to complain vociferously about one of my books), email [email protected]. I'm always delighted to hear from my readers!

My Official Biography is as follows:

Sophie Hannah is an internationally bestselling crime fiction writer whose books have sold millions of copies worldwide. Her crime novels have been translated into 49 languages and published in 51 countries. Her psychological thriller The Carrier won the Crime Thriller of the Year Award at the 2013 UK National Book Awards. In 2014 and 2016, Sophie published The Monogram Murders and Closed Casket, the first new Hercule Poirot mysteries since Agatha Christie's death, both of which were national and international bestsellers. She went on to publish a third, The Mystery of Three Quarters in 2018 which was an instant bestseller, and her fourth Poirot novel, The Killings at Kingfisher Hill will be published in August 2020. Sophie helped to create a Master’s Degree in Crime and Thriller Writing at the University of Cambridge, for which she is the main teacher and Course Director. She is also the founder of the Dream Author Coaching Programme for writers which launched in September 2019.

Sophie is also an award-winning, bestselling poet, and her poetry is studied at GCSE level across the UK. She has co-written two murder mystery musicals with composer Annette Armitage: The Mystery of Mr. E and Work Experience. She has written a self-help book called How To Hold a Grudge: From Resentment to Contentment - The Power of Grudges to Transform Your Life, and hosts the How to Hold a Grudge podcast.

Sophie lives with her husband, children and dog in Cambridge, where she is an Honorary Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College.

And I can be found online here:

Website: www.sophiehannah.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/sophiehannahauthor/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/sophiehannahwriter/

Twitter: www.twitter.com/sophiehannahCB1

http://dreamauthorcoaching.com

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/how-to-hold-a-grudge/id1439465411

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Customers find the storyline amazing and life affirming. They also describe the characters as rich and complicated.

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Customers find the plot chillingly interesting, solid, and never predictable. They also appreciate the nuanced writing that steadily builds suspense. Readers also describe the author's writing style as quirky, mentally in-depth, and amazing. They say the book is very life affirming and life-changing.

"This is by far the best in the series. Aside from the wonderful, intricate plot , the book sheds more light on the unusual and bizarre relationship..." Read more

"...And I did.. the book holds a solid mystery crime story , some dead people show up, some clues and who is the killer......" Read more

"...It is also very life affirming . A great read- amusing, horrifying- all the stuff of a great suspenseful thriller." Read more

"...read almost all of the Zeiler & Waterhouse books and I find them mesmerizing ...." Read more

Customers find the characters in the book rich and complicated.

"...hope that more TV adaptations come about because these characters are rich and complicated and could potentially form the basis of a long-running..." Read more

"...The side characters are solid too , all playing their own clear part in the story.The rest of the story is pretty good...." Read more

" Loved the complicated characters in this story and the deeply complicated family relationships that make this story so compelling...." Read more

"A rough start in building the exposition, the characters are well developed and chillingly interesting, you will be shocked in the end by the..." Read more

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A high-powered CEO puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much younger intern. A high-powered CEO puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much younger intern. A high-powered CEO puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much younger intern.

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• Nicole Kidman
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• 1 nomination

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• Runtime 1 hour 54 minutes

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