Solid story, fresh milieu, kick-ass protagonist.
A Choctaw horse relay rider goes missing in the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma.
Oklahoma City homicide detective Perry Antelope and her partner, Sophia Burns, arrive on the scene after they receive word of a young woman’s abduction from an abandoned rest stop. Both the missing woman, Delphine Adele “Dels” Billy, who isn’t answering her phone, and the teenage boy she was riding with, who’s now lying unconscious in the grass nearby, are Choctaw, like Perry. According to Dels’ team, she had set off for home after winning an Indian horse relay race, which consists of a rider switching horses twice while doing laps around a half-mile track. When her team drove by the rest stop, they spotted her truck and trailer, stopped, and found the vehicle empty. There doesn’t seem to be a monetary motive for kidnapping Dels; as her boyfriend puts it, “This isn’t the Kentucky Derby.” Of course, Perry is well aware, but doesn’t say, that “snatching women often had nothing to do with money.” While Dels’ abduction occurred in the Seminole Nation—that is, out of the Oklahoma City Police Department’s jurisdiction—a tribal officer invites Perry and her partner to join the search. Mihesuah is Choctaw and a historian, and readers will sometimes be able to hear the author in Perry’s more expansive thoughts and comments—about the Indian horse relay tradition, about the history of U.S. government allotments to Native people. Although the novel’s prose can sometimes be workmanlike, the story, which makes extremely clever use of a misunderstanding, is a compelling and original one. Initially, events proceed at a fairly relaxed pace, accommodating Perry’s musings—on her Comanche husband, on her garden, on her food preferences—but that changes when she has cause to demonstrate her physical might, at which point the mystery becomes a thriller and Perry someone not unlike an action hero.
Solid story, fresh milieu, kick-ass protagonist.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593983829
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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