One of Deckled Edge Books‘s “5 Books With Diverse Perspectives You Can Read Today”

“In this unsettling mix of noir and paranormal obsession . . . Arellano displays a sly, Hitchcockian touch.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Arellano pulls off the not-inconsiderable feat of making the disintegration of his hero more compelling than the end of the world as we know it.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Arellano’s taut prose [is] a trip into the mind of a man on the edge of delirium, piecing together a puzzle at the expense of his marriage and his sanity.”
—AARP

“Arellano writes with pure movement and action . . . Curse the Names does exactly what Hitchcock and The Twilight Zone did so well. It takes the ordinary, the benign and relatable and turns it into a fast-paced romp with unexpected events and realizations at every turn. Don’t be surprised if you start this book and don’t look up again until you’re finished. Though its release has come at the doorstep of 2012, Arellano has definitely earned a late addition to my best books of 2011.”
—Ryan W. Bradley, The Nervous Breakdown

“Readers, fasten your seat belts for this one. Arellano’s novel is a dizzying Thompsonian concoction of noir crime thriller and alternately nightmarish and comic surreal psychodrama, spiced up with a heaping handful of local northern New Mexico flavor.”
—Albuquerque Journal

“Curse the Names reads like a top-notch thriller. Arellano is a master at mining the psychological landscape of his characters—the unique and in some cases downright eccentric subcultures of northern New Mexico: the dope-growing pariah ex-hippies, the brainy scientists of Los Alamos who’ve bartered their souls for big salaries, and the mercenary, self-medicating professionals who flock around them to feed off their scraps. Alternating between the hilarious and the dreamlike, the novel is imbued the sense of foreboding inherent to Los Alamos’ infamous ‘gift’ to mankind.”
—George Mastras, author of Fidali’s Way

“The nightmare intensity to Arellano’s prose gets under your skin. You won’t want to turn the lights out after reading it.”
—Charles Ardai, Edgar Award winner