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Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Silver Nitrate: a dark and gripping thriller from the New York Times bestselling author Kindle Edition

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.1 1,524 ratings

Editors' pick Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

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A breathtaking blend of Mexican horror movies and dark occultism from the bestselling author of Mexican Gothic.

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She's a talented sound editor, but she's left out of the boys' club running the film industry in '90s Mexico City. And she's all but invisible to her best friend Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, even though she's been in love with him since childhood.

'Gripping and unusual' - Guardian

Then Tristán discovers his new neighbour is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he has a way to change their lives - even if his tales of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed.

Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse . . . but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her.

As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristán might just find out that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies . . .

"Perfection" - Kiersten White, bestselling author of Hide

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Hip as hell, Silver Nitrate delivers a cinematic and exhilarating punch. Silvia Moreno-Garcia does it again with this creepy and unforgettable occult thriller, teeming with the decadence of old horror movies. It’s Mexico City in the 1990s, where beepers, cigarettes, and the ghost of an ex-girlfriend come alive as if leaping from the page. I felt cooler just reading it.”—Kali Fajardo-Anstine, bestselling author of Woman of Light and Sabrina & Corina

“I’d read hundreds of pages of just Montserrat and Tristán being cantankerously charming best friends, but add a cursed film and a secret society of sorcerers? Perfection. No one punctures the skin of reality to reveal the lurking, sinister magic beneath better than Silvia Moreno-Garcia.”—Kiersten White, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hide

“Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a treasure and Silver Nitrate is a gem: a chilling roller coaster of a tale that captures perfectly why we love horror movies, scary books, and things that go bump in the night.”—Chris Bohjalian, New York Times bestselling author of The Lioness

“Silver Nitrate is a popcorn thrill ride into the underbelly of 1990s Mexican horror movies and occultism. Moreno-Garcia crafts a world so rich with details and history that you won’t be able to look away. Beyond being a breakneck read, this book forces readers to reckon with the monsters that scare us, on screen and in the shadows.”—Dana Schwartz, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anatomy: A Love Story

“Moreno-Garcia takes readers behind the scenes of 1993 Mexico City’s horror movie industry in this powerful and chilling thrill ride. . . . The narrative shifts effortlessly between fantasy, horror, and romance, helmed by a well-shaded cast. The complex female characters are particular standouts. This is a knockout.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“You don’t just read this book, you live in it—and it will charm you, intrigue you, and scare the daylights out of you.”—Tim Powers, World Fantasy Award–winning author of The Anubis Gates --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the author of the novels The Daughter of Dr. Moreau, Velvet Was the Night, Mexican Gothic, Gods of Jade and Shadow, and a bunch of other books. She has also edited several anthologies, including the World Fantasy Award–winning She Walks in Shadows (aka. Cthulhu’s Daughters). She has won the British Fantasy Award and the Locus Award for her work as a novelist. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

An engorged, yellow moon painted the sky a sickly amber hue, illuminating a solitary figure. A woman, standing between two sycamore trees.

It had rained, and the earth was slippery as, breathing with difficulty, she ventured toward the cabin. The woods felt awake and dangerous, with the sounds of crickets and rolling thunder in the distance. There was a thin humming. Was that a bird? It was too high-pitched, that noise.

The woman pressed a hand against her lips and stared at the cabin, with its welcoming lights. But that oasis of warmth was distant. A twig snapped, and the woman looked behind her in terror. She began to run.

The noises of the night were now mixed with the patter of her feet. She flew forward, and her hands desperately pulled at the front door—there was a thump, so loud it sounded like a cannon—until she finally managed to burst into the cabin. She immediately shut the door, bolted it, and stepped back, waiting. Her eyes were wide.

The crash of an axe against the wood made the woman jump. Splinters flew. The woman screamed, pressing back farther into the room as a man hacked his way through the door. The scream was an annoying squeal that made the levels jump into the red. The man lingered at the threshold, clutching the axe. He began advancing; his breath was heavy, punctuated with an annoying pop.

“Demon possession again?” Montserrat asked. Her eyes were on the VU meter; on her knee she balanced a notepad.

“Ghosts,” Paco said.

She scribbled in the notepad. “I thought you were into ninjas.”

“We’re still doing the ninjas. Just not now.”

“A ninja moratorium.”

The woman screamed again. Montserrat pressed a button. The image froze on the screen. She spun her chair around.

The padded room smelled faintly of the pine-scented air freshener that the other sound editors liked to spray around to cover up the fact that they were smoking inside. The whole place was a bit of a mess. The editors regularly left pizza boxes and empty bottles of Pepsi around the mixing room, along with the scent of cigarettes. “No food or smoking in the editing room” said a sign half hidden behind the random stickers the editors had pasted on it over the years. In theory, this admonition made sense, especially when you were dealing with film. You didn’t want to smear a workprint with grease. In practice, though, all editors were supposed to eat in front of the monitors. You were constantly working your ass off in post-production, trying to make up for missed deadlines. Montserrat had never been in a facility that was perfectly neat and organized. Editing rooms all looked like war zones unless a client was poking their head around.

Still, she might have tidied up if Paco hadn’t ambushed her. Unfortunately for him, this particular mixing room was small and, unlike the bigger rooms, didn’t have a client area with a couch. Paco was sitting uncomfortably on a chair, by the door, next to a pile of tapes and vinyl records, and from the look of his position he was probably getting a cramp.

“So, what do you think?” Paco asked.

“I think this is the kind of shit you shouldn’t have to be fixing in post-production. Did you shoot these scenes inside a washing machine? The sound is terrible. Those levels are way too hot.”

“I know, I know. But what can you expect with these budgets?”

“It’s going to take me a couple of weeks.”

“I need it to be done in five days.”

Montserrat shot him a skeptical look. “Not likely. Mario will tell you as much.”

“Come on, I’m not asking Mario, I’m asking you.”

“I don’t want to be stuck here from the crack of dawn until midnight because you forgot to hire a person who can hold a boom mike in the right position.”

“Don’t do this to me. I’ve got hundreds of units due at Videocentro and can’t run the duplicates if the master is a mess. Don’t you get overtime for this stuff? Must be a hefty check.”

“I wish,” she said.

Though there was the yearly discretionary bonus. The full-timers got the aguinaldo mandated by the law, but freelancers like Montserrat couldn’t count on that. They had to rely on the gratitude of their employers. At Antares, Mario gave his editors a turkey, a bottle of cheap whiskey, and a Christmas bonus. It was never a generous bonus—it shrank or expanded at whim—this despite the fact she was by far the best sound editor at Antares. She was also the only woman on the Antares team, aside from the receptionist, which was probably why she never became a full-timer, never had the right to an aguinaldo, and instead had to rely on Mario’s mercurial temper: the editing business was a boys’ club. There were a few women working at studios writing the scripts that were used for subtitling and dubbing. There were also female translators, though those were often freelancers who were contracted for single projects. But full-time female sound editors? Those were as rare as unicorns.

“Look, I have to meet someone for lunch,” Montserrat said, grabbing her leather jacket from the hook by the door and slipping it on. “Why don’t you talk to Mario and we’ll see what he says? I’d love to help, but he was raging about an unpaid dubbing—”

“Come on, guys, I always pay even if I’m a few days late. As soon as I offload those videos I’ll be golden, I swear.”

Montserrat didn’t know how true that was. Paco had scored a modest hit with an Exorcist rip-off a few years before. Mexican horror movies were scarce these days. Paco had reaped the benefits of a nascent home video market a few years back. But he wasn’t doing well anymore. Four years before, René Cardona III had tried the same concept: shooting a low-budget horror copy of a hot American film with Vacaciones de Terror. Although Vacaciones was a blatant attempt at mixing Child’s Play with Amityville, the film had one semi-famous star in the form of Pedro Fernández, whose singing career had assured at least a few butts in seats. Vacaciones de Terror and its obligatory sequel had performed decently, but the market for local horror productions wasn’t substantial enough to support two filmmakers intent on churning out scary flicks, and Paco didn’t have a singer to put on the marquee.

Not that there was a market to produce anything with a semi-decent budget at this point. The best that most people could hope for were exploitation flicks like Lola La Trailera. Paco was, if anything, a little better off than most Mexican filmmakers, since he’d managed to rope a few Spanish financiers into his moviemaking schemes and so the bulk of his output was meant for the European market. He’d dump a bunch of copies at Videocentro, then sell the rest to Italy, Germany, or whoever had any dough to spare. Paco’s work was slightly more nutritious fare than what most of the other exploitation hounds offered, but nothing to get excited about.

“Montserrat, come on, darling, you know I’m solid. How about we do this: I pay you the overtime. I’ll throw in . . . oh, how much would you want?” he asked, reaching into his pocket and producing a wallet.

“God, Paco, you don’t have to bribe me.”

“Then you’ll do it?”

Montserrat had been working at Antares for the past seven years. She’d never made it into the two big film studios, but you had to be the son of someone to edit at a place like that. Positions were passed down through the STPC and STIC like knighthoods. Now that Estudios América was being dismantled, the movie business was even more of a mess than before, and competition for positions was cutthroat. Antares had been, when you added all the pluses and minuses, not that bad.

Not that bad, that is, until the previous year, when the company had hired a new sound editor. Everyone loved young people and despised old ones. Help wanted ads always specified “35 and under,” sometimes even “30 and under.” Samuel, the newest member of the team, was definitely under thirty. Mario had funneled a bunch of assignments to Samuel, in part because his youth meant he was one of their lowest paid employees. Antares saved money with Samuel. And, as a result, Montserrat had been pulled from several projects. She’d gone from working five, sometimes six days a week, to three, and she was sure Mario was going to cut her down to two by December. Maybe they’d end up assigning this job to Samuel.

Crap, she needed to make more money. Her sister didn’t ask her for anything, but Montserrat knew she was hurting a little. She had been working only part-time for half a year now; the cancer treatments were too exhausting for her to manage her usual workload at the accounting firm. Montserrat tried to chip in when she could.

“Follow me,” she muttered, looking at her watch. She’d be late if she didn’t step out now.
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0B73W1SY7
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Arcadia (July 18, 2023)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 18, 2023
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1971 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 514 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0593743857

Best Sellers Rank: #858,917 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,388 in Fantasy TV, Movie & Game Tie-In
- #3,575 in Ghost Fiction
- #3,798 in Occult Horror

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4.1 1,524 ratings

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the author of Silver Nitrate, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Mexican Gothic, and many other books. She has won the Locus, British Fantasy and World Fantasy awards.

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Alyssia2777

wow!

Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2024

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Once again Silvia has reeled me in!
I’m not going to lie, the first couple chapters, I almost gave up but my faith in her story telling kept me going, and it paid off.
I love that the ending was so mundane and like a sappy romance novel lol while the rest of the book was a very technical and involved tale of magic, murder, mystery, and lots and lots of history about Mexican film.

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Brent A

The climax was worth the eait

Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2024

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This is the second book of hers that I've read and really enjoy her style and perspective I will say I thought this was a bit of a slow burn and at points a little repetitive. However, about 3/4 of way in all the stuff hits the fan, and I sped thru the last part. Would recommend....if you have patience

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Alix

Liked it but didn’t love it

Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2023

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3.5 stars

Silver Nitrate contains a mix of horror, mystery, and magic. I appreciated the attention to detail Silvia Moreno-Garcia paid to classic Spanish horror films and famous occultists. The occult elements were easily the most entertaining portions of this book and it was interesting to see how prevalent occultism was in Nazi Germany and how it tied into the concept of the “Aryan race.”

I liked the overall story but I didn’t love it. The pacing was slow the first half and I didn’t care for the character of Tristan. His selfish habits rubbed me the wrong way at times. The story and ending are perfectly fine but I was never completely drawn into what was happening or really cared. Perhaps there was a lack of connection and emotional impact for me. This is still a good book but I’ve personally preferred some of Moreno-Garcia’s other works more.

7 people found this helpful

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Summer

A twisted tale of magic!

Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2023

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I went into this novel a bit hesitant due to my kind of meh feelings about Mexican Gothic. I'm not a fan of Gothic horror, and wasn't sure if that style crossed over into her other books. I'm happy to say that it doesn't. This book was well paced, interesting, and held my attention.

I loved the character of Tristán, he greatly reminded me of my best friend back home, before he fell apart. The portrayal of their relationship felt so familiar and made me long for what I used to have. I really enjoyed his cockiness, and Montserrat's more mellow, intellectual personality played off of it so well.

The book also deals with two of my very favorite subjects; cults, and movies. Anyone who knows me knows just how worked up I get about film especially, to the point that I even married a special effects artist. The cult in this book felt grounded in some of the older groups that I know of, and the history of Mexican cinema was fascinating.

In the beginning, I kind of saw some elements of The Craft, with inexperienced people messing around with forces that they don't understand. That feeling quickly faded as the story came into its own, becoming a twisted and unique tale of magic. I was fully immersed and although some bits were easy to predict, much of the story unfolded in ways I couldn't predict.

I'm looking forward to checking out more of this author's books in the future.

10 people found this helpful

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Adanze Asante

A Slow Burn

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2024

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It took a long time to gain momentum, but since I am a Moreno fan I became patient. She spent a great deal of time introducing the protagonists. The book didn't jump off until the last third of the book. However, Moreno does not disappoint; the darkness jumps off the page into our little hearts.

Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2023

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Absolutely wonderful! The author is such a great storyteller. If you have not read their other stories, download them right away! As a horror fan, I found this book to be very entertaining with a great storyline that stretched back into horror cinema by many years. The story was so creative with mentions of the occult and lots of magic. I’d loved the character’s development and growth throughout the story. Thank you for a wonderful read!

4 people found this helpful

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Daytona Fortney

Slow start but a fun ending

Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2023

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This book was overall really good! However, the first quarter of the book was a little slow for me. Once the "horror " elements took off, I really enjoyed it. I personally didn't need the last chapter, but I don't think it takes away from the book.

3 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Very tedious beginning

Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2024

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Too much meandering of passages quoted from book by sorcerer, and descriptions of old film making. It was well over page 100 before the occult took shape and became a story. I was a huge fan of Mexican Gothic and The Daughter of Dr Murray and admire the author's imagination but only mildly recommend Silver Nitrate.

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Ada Chivers (@soterradaporlivros)

Silvinha rainha

Reviewed in Brazil on February 19, 2024

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Todo livro da Silvia é a mesma coisa, eu penso, esse é meu favorito, aí ela lança outro e pah, esse é o meu favorito!

Obviamente não foi diferente dessa vez e eu tô arrasada que não tenho mais Momo e Tristan na minha vida.

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David D.

Excellent!

Reviewed in Canada on July 22, 2023

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This is an absolutely brilliant horror story! Creepy, chilling and action packed! One could not ask for anything better than this!

2 people found this helpful

Philip Leonard

A well written novel

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 18, 2024

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A good read from Silvia Moreno-Garcia, although I think I preferred Mexican Gothic. I liked the story and the characters.

caroline g

Five stars!

Reviewed in France on December 8, 2023

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Great read

Baiba

Occult in the 90s in Mexico.

Reviewed in Germany on August 19, 2023

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The magic system was so subtle i could easily imagine it in our real world and that was scary! Also i had so much memories of my childhood that i had forgotten, jut because this story through me back with the beautifully detailed descriptions.

I don’t know how to describe it- it was easy to read this book but it also was a slow read, it was challenging and i highly enjoyed it.

I’m really sad it’s over🥹

I will miss this world, this story and the characters.

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Silver Nitrate: a dark and gripping thriller from the New York Times bestselling author Kindle Edition

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Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Product details

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About the author

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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