A sometimes-engaging spin on historical events that’s hampered by inadequate character development.
In Charns’ alternate-history novel, a sex worker accuses a U.S. Supreme Court justice of purchasing his services during the height of the 1960s “Lavender Scare.”
In 1966, imprisoned sex worker George Smith tells his attorney, Mitch “Puck” Pilsudski, that he “balled Abe Fortas,” the Supreme Court justice. That’s why he’s in jail now, he says, on false charges, because the government is trying to keep him quiet. Puck is skeptical but decides to look into the claim. It’s an era in which many people were fired from government service just because of their sexual orientation, and when Smith’s statement gets back to J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director decides to use it to get something he wants from the Court—by blackmailing Fortas. Specifically, Hoover wants the Court to rule favorably on a surveillance case relating to union leader Jimmy Hoffa. At the same time, Puck writes a letter to Justice Fortas to ask for assistance on Smith’s behalf; the FBI intercepts the note and perceives it as a threat. Additional intrigue is afoot as well—one of Puck’s clients is tied to the Hoffa case, and Fortas’ gay clerk gets fired—and the potential for everything to go public is high. This is a compact novel, but it manages to include many intriguing details about its characters and time period. The narrative blends real events with speculation, and because the novel features so much plot exposition, most of the characters feel underdeveloped; the author seems to rely on readers’ prior knowledge of the various historical figures. Puck is probably the most fully formed character, but even he feels a bit hard to pin down; it’s sometimes difficult to tell if he’s being earnest or manipulative. The book also leaves the question ambiguous about whether the central mystery contained elements of truth or was all a faked plot to take down a liberal justice. A time jump at the end puts an intriguing button on the story.
A sometimes-engaging spin on historical events that’s hampered by inadequate character development.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2026
ISBN: 9798242385139
Page Count: 193
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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