A swirling story of cross-generational secrets and complex family bonds.
In Stiles’ mystery set in 2015, a Brooklynite pottery instructor likes to start fires, so when a strange conflagration breaks out while she’s home for the holidays in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, she becomes a prime suspect.
Mary Newcombe has no memory of being present on the night of the fire, but several people seem to remember seeing her there, including the local mail carrier: “It creeps me out that they’re all looking over and staring at me like I’m a liar,” Mary narrates. Also, her adoptive mother, Beatrice “Birdie” Newcombe, appears to know more about the evening in question than she’s letting on. Mary wonders if the locals have simply fallen victim to local gossip; she’s also troubled by the possibility that they may have other agendas in accusing her. It doesn’t help her frame of mind that, for as long as Mary can remember, Birdie has habitually kept secrets from her. The police clearly know more than they’re telling as well, as they’re searching for Mary’s cousin, oyster farmer Jimmy Newcombe, as part of their investigation. Soon afterward, the situation becomes more mysterious when Birdie reveals, in a voicemail, that Jimmy has been killed in a car accident. Stiles effectively weaves a grand conspiracy that the protagonist must unravel to prove her innocence and learn the truth. The story, however, isn’t exclusively told through her eyes; Barbara Haskins, who’s a nurse at a women’s health clinic, and Lisa Doanne, a member of a local cleaning company, effectively frame the narrative, as well. One of the novel’s key themes is how people and events often exist in gray areas; as a result, readers may sometimes struggle to sympathize with a given character’s actions. Overall, though, this perspective results in natural, realistic storytelling, in which each moment flows naturally from the last. Overall, this twisty novel will be a good option for those looking for an unconventional and thematically potent mystery.
A swirling story of cross-generational secrets and complex family bonds.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9798892420303
Page Count: 325
Publisher: Alcove Press
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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