A charmingly absurd romance made for anyone who ever wished their book boyfriends could come to life.
A woman accidentally brings Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy to life in modern-day London.
Zoe Knight once dreamed of writing romance novels, but after being discouraged by her jerk of an ex-boyfriend, she gave up writing for good. But she still loves reading romance, and she much prefers her perfect book boyfriends to real-life London men. When she finds herself in a bookstore one rainy day, she’s horrified to find they don’t carry romance—and the owner, Nick Baskerville, actually says he hates romance novels and the unrealistic expectations they create. Zoe finds a copy of her favorite book, Pride and Prejudice, on the shelf and decides to bring it home with her. But once she’s out of the shop, she quickly realizes this isn’t a regular edition. Reading it somehow summons Fitzwilliam Darcy himself into the real world. He’s wearing Regency clothing, talks like a Jane Austen character, and has no idea where he is. Zoe has no choice but to bring Darcy back to her apartment and help him acclimate to modern life. When Nick finds out that Darcy is in the real world, he tells Zoe she needs to send him back into the book. But Darcy is the literary man of her dreams, and for the first time, Zoe sees how nice it is to come home to a man who’s kind and considerate. She soon finds out, though, that keeping Darcy in modern London might have serious consequences. Sampson has created a delightful fish-out-of-water story—seeing Darcy flounder as he tries to understand showers, buses, and reality TV provides many comedic moments. A twist in the latter part of the book drags things out a bit longer than necessary, but this is still a sweet and funny look at wish fulfillment and learning to appreciate the real life in front of you.
A charmingly absurd romance made for anyone who ever wished their book boyfriends could come to life.Pub Date: July 7, 2026
ISBN: 9781464264764
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
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
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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