Come for the action, leave deeply moved by the fiercely beautiful meditations on maternal love.
How far would a mother go to save her daughter?
Simone Seaborn leaves her home in London for southwest Texas to meet her teenage daughter, Lucy, who’s spent the summer there before starting college. The two have planned a camping trip as a reunion after the longest period they’ve ever spent apart. But almost immediately, the trip seems cursed: Simone’s suitcase is lost—maybe even “on the moon,” according to an airport attendant. She and Lucy are reunited at their Airbnb stopover, only for Simone to wake in the morning and find Lucy missing. Left behind: a phone that begins to ring, “Caller Unknown.” Lucy has been kidnapped. Simone immediately snaps into action, following all the kidnapper’s instructions, including not to notify the police, a decision that her husband, Damien, strongly opposes. She travels to the meeting place only to be sent across the border to Mexico, where she must pick up a package and bring it back to Texas. Simone and Lucy are eventually reunited, but by then things have gone very wrong: Simone shoots the messenger who brings Lucy to the meetup, and then Lucy accidentally shoots an off-duty cop who’s coming to investigate the noise. On the run in the rural Texas desert, mother and daughter strike out to save each other and to clear their names. The plot is convoluted, and even a little absurd, but it keeps you guessing. What truly shines through in McAllister’s fluid prose, though, is the love. This is a novel about motherhood, and mothers and daughters, and the transition from childhood to adulthood. It’s about sacrifice and loss, but also joy, and the tenuous beauty of each moment of life. It’s about saving the day in even the direst of circumstances, and how love between a parent and child is never a loan, but exists forever—past, present, and future—even as time inevitably slips by.
Come for the action, leave deeply moved by the fiercely beautiful meditations on maternal love.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9780063338470
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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