Vivid fiction that asks how you can run from your past when it made you who you are.
Eleven stories that cast different facets of Italian American identity in a neo-noir light.
In the collection's eponymous opener, an aspiring director must choose between his next film or his family. "Do I Amuse You?" profiles an English professor, stuck in a no-tenure job and unmoored by his parents' death in a car crash, who latches onto Goodfellas as his emotional safety blanket. In "Zeitgeist Comics," a comic-book editor fires his whole department to save his job, newly expanded to include writing six monthly issues. A woman goes through a medical operation to "Take It Out of Me," replacing her working-class memories with upper-class ones. An about-to-be-canceled children’s TV sitcom goes rogue in "The Complete Oral History of Monkey High School," spawning a dedicated subculture. Salvatore Pane’s stories can range from SF to neo-noir, but many start from a similar beginning: an Italian American upbringing in Pennsylvania or New Jersey, “where everything smells like tomatoes and garlic.” A cinematic thread weaves through them, and it can feel as though scenes are written with the camera in mind, what with dramatic last-minute trains to Siena, British hand models riding in shiny cars, and deals made while picking at shrimp cocktails. The most enjoyable stories are formally inventive; "The Complete Oral History of Monkey High School" chronicles the show's evolution in mock-documentary format, and “The Absolutely True Autobiography of Tony Rinaldi, the Man Who Changed Pro Wrestling Forever” includes angry footnotes from his ghostwriter. It’s in these stories that Pane’s sense of play is most evident, and they buoy the collection.
Vivid fiction that asks how you can run from your past when it made you who you are.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2023
ISBN: 9781637680780
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Autumn House Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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