by T.J. Newman ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 30, 2023
A taut, gripping yarn. Not for the weak-kneed.
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New York Times Bestseller
A spectacular aviation thriller that readers will be relieved to know is fiction.
Just off the coast of Hawaii, Flight 1421’s engine explodes minutes after takeoff with 99 souls aboard. With no controls, “the plane was dead in the air,” and the pilot makes an emergency landing into the Pacific Ocean, with inevitable but disastrous results. Although some people perish on impact, “the worst was yet to come.” The survivors are left with a Hobson’s choice: escape the airplane and hope the burning jet fuel on the ocean’s surface doesn't kill them or stay in the fuselage and probably drown when it sinks and is crushed by the depths. Twelve passengers and crew remain alive in the Airbus, including Will Kent and his 11-year-old daughter, Shannon. On a nearby island, Will’s soon-to-be-ex-wife Chris learns about the crash and decides to help in the rescue efforts. By an amazing coincidence, she just happens to have all the engineering, scuba diving, and spot-welding chops to complement her fierce Mama Bear personality. Meanwhile, Will convinces a few passengers to stay inside the sinking fuselage as they desperately look for ways to keep the structure watertight. In an important subplot, Will and Chris separately reflect on what had gone so terribly wrong in their family: Their older daughter, Annie, had died years before, and neither parent knows how to cope with that pain. Now Chris faces still more losses: her family, the remaining passengers and crew, and perhaps her own life. The wrecked Airbus is balanced on the precipice of a cliff 200 feet below the surface, close to the limits of where anyone can come to help. If it falls off the edge, all hope is lost. If readers can get past a few hair-raising and cringeworthy early scenes, they'll find themselves engrossed in this darned good thriller.
A taut, gripping yarn. Not for the weak-kneed.Pub Date: May 30, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-982177-91-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Daniel Silva ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 15, 2025
A rather flat entry in a generally excellent series.
The 25th novel featuring Silva’s legendary protagonist.
During his intersecting careers as art restorer and Israeli spy, Gabriel Allon has tangled with Russian gangsters and al-Qaida terrorists. He has become well-acquainted with operatives in multiple security agencies and befriended a paid assassin. He has busted art thieves and created passable forgeries by Renaissance masters and abstract Modernists. This latest installment centers around his relationship with the pope and a newly discovered painting by Leonardo da Vinci that has gone missing from the Vatican. Silva’s novels tend to fall into two categories: books that reflect the politics of the day and books that don’t. His latest is one of the latter, which could be a treat for readers looking for escape, but it falls flat for a variety of reasons. Luxury has always been part of Gabriel Allon’s universe. It used to be an aspect of tradecraft, though. Allon would be wearing a very expensive suit and driving a very expensive car because he was posing as a client at a Swiss bank. Here, his wife is hosting a catered lunch for 150 of their daughter’s classmates in their apartment overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice. What once felt like a scintillating peek into the world of the obscenely wealthy now just feels…kind of obscene. Similarly, Allon goes chasing after a missing painting as a civilian—he retired from Mossad in Portrait of an Unknown Woman (2022)—the same way another man his age might buy a speedboat or get hair plugs. As the story progresses, the stakes are raised, but it’s hard to forget that Allon is now a middle-aged man pursuing a dangerous hobby, rather than a spymaster leading his intrepid team to prevent a disaster that will disrupt the global order.
A rather flat entry in a generally excellent series.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780063384217
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 27, 2025
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
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328
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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