A solid and fast-moving, if sometimes-formulaic, mystery tale.
In this medical thriller, an exiled physician is drawn back to duty when illness shadows an isolated commune.
Cyrus Darian, once a practicing physician, has traded hospital hallways for hiking trails, retreating into solitude in the American wilderness. While passing through Oregon, he encounters Brent Carlson, a gravely injured member of the insular Reckoning Grove commune—a group viewed with suspicion by surrounding towns. Cyrus saves his life and then takes him to a local hospital, where Brent dies suddenly and unexpectedly. His death doesn’t make sense to Cyrus, who finds that he can’t simply walk away. He remains near the commune and begins to notice unsettling consistencies among the residents: persistent fatigue, unexplained physical decline, mysterious neurological symptoms, and a shared reluctance to seek outside help. The atmosphere is thick with distrust, and the commune’s insularity complicates Cyrus’ attempts to ask questions; local health officials dismiss his concerns, viewing him as an outsider with no standing. Soon, the doctor starts receiving anonymous warnings from someone who wants his inquiry to end, escalating from vague cautions to pointed threats. As the body count rises, Cyrus must rely on clinical reasoning and sharp instinct, piecing together symptoms while navigating secrecy and suspicion. His internal struggle, balancing a desire for detachment with an unshakable commitment to do no harm, adds an emotional undercurrent to the novel’s procedural elements. The Mashaws weave in diagnostic details without letting them overwhelm the narrative, allowing the medical investigation to propel rather than stall the plot. That said, the story treads some familiar ground; the mysterious commune, the skeptical authorities, and the reluctant-hero arc follow well-worn genre conventions, and many characters lack psychological complexity. The novel also favors momentum over layered plot development. Still, the authors succeed in delivering a cohesive, accessible, and entertaining thriller that’s easy to follow—and difficult to put down.
A solid and fast-moving, if sometimes-formulaic, mystery tale.Pub Date: March 1, 2026
ISBN: 9798994091012
Page Count: 278
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A disarmingly heartfelt space adventure that dares to suggest genocide might be a bad business.
When a bunch of corporate assholes mark their planet for destruction, a garage band of colonists must defend their home world with the power of rock.
Slightly sidestepping his frenetic litRPG—literary role-playing game—doorstoppers, here Dinniman takes on capitalism, propaganda, xenophobia, and violence as entertainment. Thankfully for readers, it’s all wrapped in the usual profane, adolescent humor, and SF readers will have a ball. A couple of hundred years after they left Earth, the inhabitants of the interstellar colony of New Sonora weren’t expecting much in the way of new threats, especially after a mysterious illness killed almost everyone between the ages of 30 and 60. That disaster left only the young and the old on the populated planet, where farming is enabled by highly accelerated AI and people are generally cool with each other. But when drummer Oliver Lewis stumbles across a foul-mouthed killer mech piloted by a child, he realizes that something’s definitely fishy. Earth, it seems, has classified the New Sonorans as non-human and scheduled their destruction as a paid, five-day combat game. Apex Industries, led by lead mercenary Eli Opel, has reverse-engineered Ender’s Game and is turning loose its players with real bullets and bombs on the population of New Sonora. The resistance is a weird bunch, led by proto-slacker Oliver; his little sister, Lulu; and his ex-girlfriend, documentary filmmaker and burgeoning revolutionary Rosita Zapatero, as well as the other members of Oliver’s band, the Rhythm Mafia. Thankfully, they also have Roger, the last functioning AI on the planet, though Oliver’s grandfather permanently programmed it to nannybot mode as a dying joke. Call the book overlong—the battle scenes often feel like watching someone play a videogame—but the humor and the execution are cutting without being mean and there’s almost always a point.
A disarmingly heartfelt space adventure that dares to suggest genocide might be a bad business.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2026
ISBN: 9780593820308
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.
On the isle of Capri, Helen Lingate seeks revenge on the people responsible for her mother’s death 30 years earlier—her own family.
When Sarah Lingate fell to her death on Capri in 1992, she left behind a 3-year-old daughter, Helen, and a legacy as a gifted playwright; her favorite necklace of golden snakes was lost to the sea. Thirty years later, Helen, chafing at the restrictions she’s grown up under as a member of the old-money Lingate family, hatches a plan with her uncle Marcus’ assistant, Lorna Moreno, to blackmail her uncle and her father with that same necklace, which mysteriously entered her possession a few months before. The novel begins on Capri just after Lorna disappears, and then traces her steps from 36 hours earlier. Interweaving chapters from the points of view of Helen, Lorna, and Sarah—as well as, later, a few others—we learn how Sarah gradually became stifled by the constant pressure of keeping up appearances until she became inspired to write a play, Saltwater, that was a not-so-thinly veiled tell-all revealing dark Lingate family secrets. It was shortly after this that she fell to her death. The loss of her mother has come to define Helen’s life, and if she can use the necklace as leverage to escape her family, and maybe learn the truth along the way, she’ll take the risk. Lorna’s motives are both murkier and more straightforward—she’s never had money, and she’s got a chip on her shoulder about it, so splitting 10 million euros with Helen sounds like a way to discard her past and start fresh. These strong, conniving women drive the drama and the narrative, and they are captivating enough that as twist after twist begins to unfurl, the novel still feels character-driven. The end—well, the end shocks. And it’s well earned. By the time the sun sets on the gorgeous excess and rugged coast of Capri, lives will have been destroyed.
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593875551
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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