Fast-moving fun from start to finish.
A hijacked laser weapon threatens to ignite World War III.
The U.S. is testing the EAGL, or Enhanced Aerial Gunnery Laser, an airborne defense system that annihilates anything it hits. It’s so fast it “can shoot down a hundred ballistic missiles before they leave enemy territory,” it never runs out of ammunition, and it will “make ballistic missiles obsolete.” But a traitor named Ridley Wiles hijacks the plane that carries it, and he kills the crew. Radar contact is lost, and National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) salvage experts Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala undertake an urgent mission to find or destroy the EAGL before Russia or China lay their hands on it. Meanwhile, a smuggler named Ahab who specializes in dumping toxic waste is dying. He blames Kurt and Gushan, an officer in China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and would like nothing better than to cause World War III before he dies. The action and excitement are damn near constant. The U.S. and China have begun joint operations on certain projects, and Kurt and Joe save Gushan’s life—barely—in the prologue. But Gushan’s superiors may later order him to hunt Americans down and kill them. He knows he owes his saviors a debt, but he is also loyal to his country and to the PLA, so he has a dilemma. The heroes are all that NUMA series readers have come to expect—smart, honorable, and resourceful under life-and-death pressure. They face attacks on the NUMA vessel Lyra, try to save a sinking ship, commandeer a cargo plane—Joe can fly it, but isn’t so sure about landing it—and hope Ahab doesn’t blow it out of the sky. As always in this series, the story is a high-stakes, brace-yourself adventure with admirable heroes who don’t shy away from the next challenge.
Fast-moving fun from start to finish.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9798217184972
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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