Historically compelling, with ominous relevance to today’s social and political chaos.
Murphy’s historical novel (featuring historically verifiable characters) examines the scandalous 1692 Salem Witch Trials.
Twelve-year-old Ann Putnam and her best friend, 11-year-old Abigail (Abby) Williams, meet in a hidden clearing in the woods of Salem, Massachusetts, where they often share their deepest secrets; they’re joined by Abby’s young cousin, Betty. Abby has a plan: She’s preparing to launch a grand hoax, one that will balloon into a massive, out-of-control tragedy. Unhappy with her living situation—she resides with her uncle, Reverend Parris, who treats her like a maid—Abby, assisted by Betty, details for Ann her pretense of being bewitched. After several weeks of throwing fits, staring blankly, and speaking gibberish, things go as Abby predicted—her uncle becomes convinced that the girls are under a spell. Ann, who suffers beatings from her menacing father, decides to similarly delude her family. Emboldened by their success, the girls enjoy a newfound power and freedom. Soon, word gets around Salem Village that there are witches in their midst, plying their diabolical trade. Families are divided and neighbors turn against neighbors. Mass hysteria, amplified by long-standing feuds and avaricious power grabs, envelops the village, ushering in months of spurious trials and horrific executions. Not until the 1698 arrival of young pastor Joseph Green will Salem Village embark upon a path toward healing. Although the narrative is a bit heavy on Biblical quotes and sermons, Murphy brings readers into the time and place using period-accurate language (“My aunt and uncle are much bewildered”) and the inclusion of the minutiae of everyday rituals and customs. The novel’s greatest strength lies in its portrayal of the pivotal roles rumors and falsehoods play in fomenting mob violence to satisfy personal agendas.
Historically compelling, with ominous relevance to today’s social and political chaos.Pub Date: June 15, 2023
ISBN: 9780997366990
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Bricktop Hill Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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