An immersive novel that delivers suspense with style and intelligence.
Five 40-something Harvard alumnae are forced to confront the consequences of the dangerous tradition they started as students.
The Circus is a yearly tag-and-kill game narrator Sara and her former roommates Allie, Bee, Dina, and Wesley began while undergraduates. The game has kept them “tether[ed]” to each other for 20 years, but it’s also kept them connected to the memory of Claudine, the artist roommate who died during their traumatic senior-year playing of the game. When the story begins, Sara sees a woman resembling Claudine on the streets of New York. Haunted by the sighting, she decides to opt out of the 20th anniversary playing of the Circus until the women get together and Wesley tells them about the money—a few thousand dollars they had chipped in decades earlier to be given to the winner of the final contest has grown to nearly $1 million. With consummate skill and acuity, Lee explores the complicated relationships among the five main characters, and all their dreams. Sara, a former banker and struggling photographer, longs for a place in the art world Claudine once dreamed of inhabiting. Her closest friend, Dina, is on the verge of tenure at Harvard after years of unspoken struggle. Bee, a lawyer, seeks political office but is dogged by a smear campaign launched by Claudine’s mother. Wesley, though born to wealth, secretly hates both her controlling father and her profession and leans “on drink and drugs to make her feel sated.” And Allie, a busy working mother of three and the group’s unofficial “peacemaker,” bears a quiet exhaustion she refuses to acknowledge. Each equates Circus prize money with freedom, but when one of them is attacked and nearly killed, secrets begin to emerge that change everything they believed about themselves and the ones they love. Fast paced and tightly plotted, Lee’s novel explores the complexities of female friendships against a quietly unsettling backdrop of privilege and ambition.
An immersive novel that delivers suspense with style and intelligence.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781668094006
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.
Second of the Walter Nash thrillers—following Nash Falls (2025)—in which the remade hero seeks vengeance.
Due to urgent circumstances, Nash has bulked himself up to become the “muscled and tatted fighting machine” now known as Dillon Hope. His antagonist is Victoria Steers, a global drug dealer who wants him dead. Not realizing his new identity, she enlists Hope to free her mother, Masuyo, from a prison in Myanmar. As an incentive, she shoots one of her associates and threatens to frame Hope for the murder unless he complies. She also wants him to find Nash. He in turn wants to kill Victoria to avenge the death of his innocent daughter, Maggie. “If I go down,” he muses, “I’m taking others with me. Starting with Victoria Steers.” He learns that Victoria had killed all her siblings to eliminate business competition. But as heartless as Victoria is, her mother, Masuyo, is even worse. In league with the Chinese government in a perverse plan to kill as many Americans as possible through fentanyl overdose, she shows contempt for Victoria for her perceived weaknesses. Readers won’t find many happy family relationships here: mother-daughter, father-son, husband-wife—all fraught. Hope’s employer, who accompanies him to Myanmar, is a billionaire chief executive with a dodgy past (i.e., probably killed his father). And there’s a mega-billionaire with an astronomical IQ and ditch-deep morals who, putting it mildly, does not have America’s best interests at heart. As a teenager, he’d defeated two world chess champions; as an adult, he regards his dealings with the world in terms of master chess moves. Only one character seems truly decent and credible—Hiroko, Victoria’s former nanny and lifelong companion, who provides Hope with valuable insights into the Steers’ background, which is partly Chinese. Searing grudges, simple evil, and not-so-simple misunderstandings carry the cast through this complex, action-packed plot. This sequel ties out the loose ends dangling in Nash Falls, which would be helpful to read first. To get to the requisite ending, though, Baldacci takes pains to surprise the reader. It works but often feels forced.
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781538758021
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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