Three unlikely companions face the ultimate evil in this engaging, if far-fetched, adventure.
A team of unlikely heroes, including Thomas Edison and Noel Coward, embarks on a desperate quest to defeat Nazis—and demons—in Church’s historical novel.
The third volume in the author’s Edison Trilogy continues the astonishing adventures of the inventor and his former assistant, John Dawkins. The story opens in 1941 with German Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess’ daring solo flight to Scotland to deliver a cryptic warning about Hitler’s secrets—a message he’ll disclose only to Thomas Edison, John Dawkins, or President Franklin Roosevelt, and only in person. Hess is dismissed as delusional: Edison has been dead for 10 years. (Dawkins has settled down on a farm in rural Pennsylvania with his wife, Sophie, a former investigative journalist, and their 10-year-old son, Josh.) Four years later, after Dawkins’ family is attacked by Nazi spies, Roosevelt asks Dawkins to go to London to “do whatever needs done,” which means dealing with unknown supernatural forces. Dawkins, with his family in tow, sets out for London, where Hess reveals Hitler’s obsession with the occult, saying, “the Magi possess the solution.” Dawkins reunites with Thomas Edison—whose spirit temporarily occupies a boy’s body—and they are joined by real-life playwright and composer Noel Coward, here an undercover agent for British intelligence. The three set out on a dangerous mission through enemy territory to discover the meaning of Hess’ cryptic words and thwart an evil that threatens the whole world. The plot moves quickly, with one action scene after another, several surprises, and a healthy dose of humor. Dawkins is a stalwart hero, Sophie is smart and plucky, Coward is witty even in dire situations (after faking a panic attack while imprisoned, he says, “I am not merely a coward. I am the Coward”), and Edison is always thrilled to learn something new. A few scenes don’t feel necessary, such as the team’s visit to an abandoned zoo, and there’s too much detail about some of the minor characters. Still, this is an entertainingly outré yarn.
Three unlikely companions face the ultimate evil in this engaging, if far-fetched, adventure.Pub Date: April 30, 2025
ISBN: 9798985576146
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Ferrisville Publications
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
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