"K.C. Frederick’s novel, After Lyletown, explores the many facets and keys of secrets, the risk of relationships, and the need to preserve and appreciate the beauty of what we already have. A house becomes a metaphor. The past becomes a piece in the puzzle of life. And a hideaway in the woods might just be a place to escape from the rain.
There are no absolutes in relationships, and no complete solutions to life’s mysteries. But After Lyletown builds something complete, something ready for the future with foundations and windows secured. It’s a satisfying journey through past and present, edged with danger, founded on history and politics, and vividly real; the sort of read you put down feeling sure you’ll need to pick it up again, just to remember the characters and spend a little more time in their company." Sheila Deeth, Cafe Libri"Throughout the novel, K.C. Frederick proves himself a genius at engineering suspense. His preferred modus operandi is to lull his readers into a sense of complacency by offering stretches of calm that threaten to give way to calamity at any moment; whenever a sense of domestic bliss begins to settle over Ripley and his family, the other shoe is hovering somewhere nearby, waiting to drop as it inevitably must. What's more, Frederick also endows his protagonist with a contemplative bent that takes Ripley beyond the realm of the merely sympathetic and into that of the philosophical. Indeed, what separates After Lyletown from other novels of its kind is that Ripley's dilemma is as much about evading the ghosts of his past as it is about searching for meaning amidst the chaos of life. A profound, thoughtful, haunting tale." Small Press Review
Inland (2006)
“As in Frederick's previous works (Accomplices, etc.), finely tuned characters are at the heart of this novel, and the authentic period backdrop adds a lushly atmospheric complement to the ever-present undertone of paranoia mixed with melancholy.” Publisher’s Weekly“…an engagingly written Cold War tale of conflicted loyalties and possible hope at the dawn of a new frontier.” Booklist“K. C. Frederick’s Inland is a work of depth and integrity. Through Ted Riley, a college student in 1959, the novel trains imagination as an instrument of insight, wisdom and feeling. Frederick’s stories of paranoia and freedom evoke questions that have no answers. Yet he does not destroy our hopes and compels us to ask how we survive and love in times that could destroy human life on earth.” Citation, L.L. Winship/PEN New England Fiction Award for 2007
Accomplices (2003)"Its curious mix of Kafka-like meditation and post-modern thriller proves quite fascinating.” Booklist
The Fourteenth Day (2000)“Meditating on love, death and national loyalty, Frederick pieces together a delicate, thoughtful allegory of war and displacement. Painted in shades of black and blue, this landscape of exile is by turns a thriller, psychological novel, meditation and romance, difficult to penetrate but well worth the effort.” Publisher’s Weekly“Frederick’s tale is as inexorable and engrossing as a recurrent nightmare.” Kirkus Reviews
Country of Memory (1998)
Country of Memory is “brilliantly disconcerting….. As Faulkner once wrote. ‘the past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ In K. C. Frederick’s Country of Memory, the many implications of such thinking are hauntingly unwound and carefully tangled. While the novel’s world may be ‘just a narrow strip on the edge of a deep chasm,’ where ‘inventions are the truest part,’ the strangest, most beguiling effect is how it begins to remind us of where we ourselves live.” Peter Rock, The Philadelphia Inquirer
“A rare, understated surrealism, reminiscent of John Hawkes’ first novels…brilliant. With this debut, Frederick proves he is a writer’s writer.” Publisher’s Weekly
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