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HONEY

Name: HONEY
Author: Imani Thompson
ISBN: 9780593979761

by Imani Thompson ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2026

Wow. Think Fleabag channeled by Valerie Solanas.

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In this debut novel, a young woman pursuing her Ph.D. at Cambridge University acts on her strong—very strong—feelings about poorly behaving men.

Yrsa—a Black Briton of Caribbean heritage—is working on her graduate degree in sociology. A source of irritation is Richardson, a married professor; he has just ended his affair with Yrsa’s friend, who is devastated. After Yrsa flicks a bee into Richardson’s lemonade without anyone noticing, he has a fatal allergic reaction, and she marvels at how easy it was to get away with murder. Yrsa decides to give Hugh, an old fling, another chance, but when he admits that he and his mates had “this point-scoring thing” with women and that Yrsa was “Black-girl magic, twenty points,” she realizes that he, too, has to go. Per the Daily Mail: “Student Found Dead Beneath One of Cambridge’s Oldest Buildings.” As Yrsa’s victims pile up, Thompson has fun skewering the impulse to intellectualize immoral behavior; as Yrsa sees it, “Hugh rendered her into an object; a commodity with perceived value; powerless. And she rendered him, dead. It’s theory in action. A new methodology.” Thompson hints at a psychological explanation for (but not a defense of) Yrsa’s murderous ways, and despite themselves, readers will acknowledge the character’s good qualities: She can be amusingly withering (“It’s hard to hear him over his ego”) and even civic-minded (she volunteers to spend time with an elderly neighbor). The novel’s ending splutters, perhaps overburdened by all that Thompson has ambitiously and impressively bitten off: a twisted comeuppance story, a campus-life spoof, and a look at the dating-app generation of women negotiating how their desire to be desired might sit with the feminism they treasure.

Wow. Think Fleabag channeled by Valerie Solanas.

Pub Date: April 21, 2026

ISBN: 9780593979761

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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THE CALAMITY CLUB

by Kathryn Stockett ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2026

Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.

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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

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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Awards & Accolades

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Our Verdict

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New York Times Bestseller

THE CORRESPONDENT

by Virginia Evans ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 6, 2025

An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.

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Awards & Accolades

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Our Verdict

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New York Times Bestseller

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.