This lively political thriller mulls love, loyalty, and the rewards of playing the long game.
A journalist gets sucked into the orbit of an enigmatic first lady—and her life will never be the same.
When we first meet Sofie Morse, the protagonist of Pitoniak’s engaging spy novel, she's living in Split, Croatia, and “wondering if [she] had made the worst mistake of [her] life.” Why have Sofie—a journalist who's left her job covering the scandal-ridden first term of President Henry Caine for a midlevel New York newspaper after the brash, self-serving POTUS is elected to a second term—and her lawyer husband, Ben, picked up stakes and moved to a city to which they had no previous ties? Why has a reporter showing up at their door and asking questions struck terror into Sofie’s heart? Over the course of the novel, Pitoniak will gradually unspool Sofie’s story as well as that of President Caine’s Moscow-born, Paris-raised, former-model wife, Lara, the beautiful, stylish, and self-possessed yet maddeningly (to the press and public) elusive first lady who has enlisted Sofie to write her biography. Pitoniak’s characters may sound familiar, but the author takes them in imaginative directions as she explores and expands upon their memories and motives and the moments in which, as they weigh individual sacrifice for greater good, their decisions change the trajectories of their lives. And although the book traffics in espionage-saga tropes—Cold War! Spies! Murder! Clandestine meetings! Secret signals! Hidden drops! The KGB! The CIA! They’re all here!—and Pitoniak ultimately wraps things up perhaps too prettily, it’s fun to pick up the clues and piece together the truth about Lara Caine, Sofie, and those with whom they interact as we toggle between exotic locales—Moscow, Paris, New York City, and Washington, D.C., in addition to Split—and the 1970s and present day.
This lively political thriller mulls love, loyalty, and the rewards of playing the long game.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982158-80-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.
A phone call from her past disrupts the tenuously reconstructed life of a concert pianist turned farmer’s wife.
We know from the beginning that Livia Cable is the battered survivor of her brother Cyrus’ death by suicide, a devastating romance, and a career-ending injury. Only 11 when Cyrus stepped in front of a train, she was already marked out as different in her rural Tennessee hometown by her extraordinary musical ability. The siblings had huddled together against their angry mother’s frequent beatings, and Livia still feels abandoned by Cyrus years later, when she picks up the phone to hear the voice of Sigurd, the fiery labor organizer she loved and lost to “the revolution” while on scholarship at the Indiana University School of Music. Now married to kind, steady childhood friend Charlie, Livia looks back on her affair with Sigurd as she struggles to deal with the recent death of her mother, a compulsive hoarder who left a house stuffed with junk to be disposed of and bitter memories that haven’t faded over time. Kingsolver skillfully juggles the two time frames to unravel Livia’s complicated feelings about the life she lost when her right hand was crushed and the life she has now as a country piano teacher. A partita, she explains to Sigurd early on, “is a composition made of a lot of parts with a lot of different moods…the artist’s work is to make them all add up to something that feels whole.” That’s precisely what Kingsolver does in this beautifully paced and judged narrative, which builds to revelations uncovered amid the piles of trash in Livia’s childhood home about the reasons for Cyrus’ suicide (clearly foreshadowed) and their mother’s rage (startling and heartbreaking). A fierce belief that great art is for everyone joins Kingsolver’s familiar preoccupations with class distinctions, social injustice, and the complex bonds of family and community in a tender denouement.
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9780063577541
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
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