An essential Anders treasury.
Novelist Anders showcases the roots of her fiction with this wide-ranging set of short stories.
Although there are no stories original to this collection, there are plenty of delights for Anders' fans and those new to her writing, including the darkly frenetic, apocalyptic novella Rock Manning Goes for Broke (published as a stand-alone in 2018) and stories set in the worlds of her novels All the Birds in the Sky (2016) and The City in the Middle of the Night (2019). The mood of these works runs the gamut from the outrageously silly (the title “Fairy Werewolf vs. Vampire Zombie” tells you almost everything you need to know except for the climactic karaoke battle) to exuberant (unearthly beings fulfill a lonely trans girl’s wish in an unexpected and beautiful way in “The Visitmothers”) to mournful tinged with hope (“Rat Catcher’s Yellows” concerns an online adventure game providing an unusual outlet for people suffering from early-onset dementia) to depressed and angrily frustrated (“Ghost Champagne” features an aspiring comedian haunted by her own ghost) to utterly wrenching (a trans woman resists a puritanical corporation’s gruesomely invasive attempt to “fix” her in “Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue,” which was also selected for The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018). Anders also explores the relationships of (literally) out-of-sync couples, such as in the Hugo Award–winning novelette Six Months, Three Days, in which the two psychic participants have diametrically and tragically opposed ways of seeing the future, and “Power Couple,” in which two ambitious people believe cryonics will help them balance their personal and professional lives. Some stories seem to be sheer “what-if” exercises—always a fruitful jumping-off point for SF—but the fully developed characters who carry out these thought experiments prevent these tales from becoming clinical, as they might in the hands of other writers.
An essential Anders treasury.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-76650-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.
A chance meeting in a museum unlocks a long-closed door in a family’s past.
Of a piece with her last three novels—Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023)—Patchett’s latest explores the evolution of families over time, romantic secrets, and step-relationships, again giving these topics the wry and tender treatment that is distinctively hers. As it begins, Daphne Fuller’s attentive husband, Jonathan, notices that a man has been following them through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At first they chalk it up to the fact that “old guys love [Daphne],” as she told Jonathan decades ago, a notion he has held onto "like a souvenir postcard from another era." But it turns out that, though Daphne doesn’t recognize him, Eddie Triplett is her former stepfather. Like the author herself, as recalled in her 2020 essay “Three Fathers,” Daphne has had three dads. Her biological father, a deep-sea fisherman named Buddy Zabriskie, left the family early; her current stepfather, Lucas Ekker, lives with her mother in retirement in Massachusetts. Ekker is an unprepossessing sort Abby met working as the publicist for his self-help books, Positivity!, Positively Positive!, The Positivity Workbook!, Positive Every Day!, ad infinitum. The man in the museum, Eddie Triplett, was also someone her mother met through her job in publishing, and once Daphne realizes who he is, she remembers that “[their] hearts were forever stitched together.” This is because Daphne and Eddie were in a serious car accident when she was 9 years old, after which her mother immediately divorced him and evicted him from their lives. The details of that accident—among them lies the reason the novel is named after a horse called Whistler—are gradually wheedled out of Daphne by her younger sister, Leda, a clinical psychologist in New York and a reliable source of insight on the narrative’s key issues. “‘You make it sound like I’ve been keeping all this from you, but I’m not,’ [Daphne] said. ‘Who goes through life thinking about what happened when they were nine?’ ‘It’s all people think about,’ Leda said.”
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9780063511637
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
A classic Green portrait of young love…but here the fault is in our social media.
A relationship between young screen actors is magical, fraught, and relentlessly public in Green’s first novel for adults.
“Every movie romance needs an Obstacle, a reason the characters don’t naturally fall into each other.” In the off-screen romance between actors Juniper Castillo and Kai Laramie, the obstacle is a moving target. Juniper notices early on that as flirty and forward as Kai is, he seems “closed off to a romantic connection”; that turns out to be the tip of a very problematic iceberg. The two meet in the lobby of a Pittsburgh hotel where they will be spending the evening with Matthew Malone, the megastar playing Andy Warhol in a movie they’re about to begin shooting, Andy Warhol Never Gets Old. Kai has been cast as Andy’s intern, Juniper as a journalist who gets in over her head. This is Juniper’s first adult role after a long run as a Nickelodeon child star, and newcomer Kai’s first role of any kind. Green evokes in compelling detail all the phases and aspects of the film project, from the table read to the screening of the rough cut, from the social media fanfare to the public premiere and the press junket, moving back and forth between Juniper’s and Kai’s first-person perspectives. In a meeting with one of the ubiquitous publicists, Kai learns that somehow “the high school stuff” he never talks about—despite their growing inseparability and seemingly profound connection, he hasn’t even brought himself to share it with Juniper—has surfaced. Details emerge slowly, then blow up in the media; the book’s third act focuses on the destructive potential of celebrity culture in a climate that makes Warhol’s milieu look innocent by comparison. After a long break from writing fiction—his last two books were Everything Is Tuberculosis (2025) and The Anthropocene Reviewed (2021)—Green fills this novel with carefully observed details of Hollywood culture and characters, including running jokes about vegan cuisine, media training, and the way Kai’s agent constantly and boorishly consults his young female assistant on points of political correctness. Can he talk about “hot girls”? Can he quote T.S. Eliot? OK to say “dog vomit”?
A classic Green portrait of young love…but here the fault is in our social media.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2026
ISBN: 9780525426073
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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