Sure, go ahead and pack this for your next long weekend—it’s fun! That said, it doesn’t really need to make the trip home.
Ellie’s beguiling, charismatic father may have had four children with three different women, but Ellie came first, literally and in his heart, too. When his perplexing bequest indicates otherwise, the 20-something reporter will use—and misuse—all her skills to uncover the truth.
It’s 2012, and 24-year-old Eleanor Adler is living her post-college, first-real-job best life. She’s in Washington, D.C., sharing a shambolic group home with roommates who clerk for federal judges and work at embassies and B-list agencies. She’s a junior reporter for Apogee, a news startup that exists to get clicks and save journalism. She’s seeing Lucas, a married 39-year-old think tanker, who takes her on dates to the Union Station food court and Maryland suburbs where they won’t be seen. Ellie’s hashtag-adulting takes a sudden and sad grown-up turn when her father unexpectedly drops dead in his Chesapeake Bay home. Although not exactly well-off, he was careful with his legacy, leaving each family member—third wife Colette; their son, Van; second-marriage daughters Sadie and Anna—a meaningful totem of his love. Except Ellie, who got a plastic gingerbread-man tie rack. It’s 100% true that said plastic tie rack is a rather flimsy MacGuffin on which to hang a plot, and the central-casting characters (size 12 Ellie doesn’t fit in and loves reading; attractive herbalist Colette visits a shaman) aren’t exactly compelling. It’s also true that they’re good enough company, especially when punctuated by sharp, spot-on observations of journalism (“They can comment after we publish”) and Washington life (“Sometimes it seemed as if people in their mid-twenties did all the work in D.C.”), informed by the author’s own decade reporting in the capital.
Sure, go ahead and pack this for your next long weekend—it’s fun! That said, it doesn’t really need to make the trip home.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-13429-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.
A phone call from her past disrupts the tenuously reconstructed life of a concert pianist turned farmer’s wife.
We know from the beginning that Livia Cable is the battered survivor of her brother Cyrus’ death by suicide, a devastating romance, and a career-ending injury. Only 11 when Cyrus stepped in front of a train, she was already marked out as different in her rural Tennessee hometown by her extraordinary musical ability. The siblings had huddled together against their angry mother’s frequent beatings, and Livia still feels abandoned by Cyrus years later, when she picks up the phone to hear the voice of Sigurd, the fiery labor organizer she loved and lost to “the revolution” while on scholarship at the Indiana University School of Music. Now married to kind, steady childhood friend Charlie, Livia looks back on her affair with Sigurd as she struggles to deal with the recent death of her mother, a compulsive hoarder who left a house stuffed with junk to be disposed of and bitter memories that haven’t faded over time. Kingsolver skillfully juggles the two time frames to unravel Livia’s complicated feelings about the life she lost when her right hand was crushed and the life she has now as a country piano teacher. A partita, she explains to Sigurd early on, “is a composition made of a lot of parts with a lot of different moods…the artist’s work is to make them all add up to something that feels whole.” That’s precisely what Kingsolver does in this beautifully paced and judged narrative, which builds to revelations uncovered amid the piles of trash in Livia’s childhood home about the reasons for Cyrus’ suicide (clearly foreshadowed) and their mother’s rage (startling and heartbreaking). A fierce belief that great art is for everyone joins Kingsolver’s familiar preoccupations with class distinctions, social injustice, and the complex bonds of family and community in a tender denouement.
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9780063577541
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
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