An inspiring novel of strong female friendships.
Grainger’s series-starting novel tells of four women in the Irish countryside as they grapple with their pasts and seek to make something better of their futures.
In the present day, Orla Moriarty’s life is turned completely upside down when her husband of 31 years leaves her for another woman. Now, as a single mother of three grown children, she must figure out what lies ahead for them all. Meanwhile, her friend Audrey Walsh seemingly has her life all figured out—until her son announces that he’s moving to Australia, the land of her birth, and she decides she must stop him from going, no matter the cost. Safira, a young woman from Bali, begins renting Dunmara House, the estate after which the town was named; she hopes to do something extraordinary with it, but all might not go according to plan. In a plotline set in 1971, a young woman named Jeannie McMillan is sent by her mother to Dunmara House to conceal her unplanned pregnancy and protect her from scandal. While there, she meets the kindly Johnny Daly, who will make her whole situation brighter. The threads of these women’s lives soon weave together, with the narrative always centering on the aforementioned Dunmara House, a beautiful and ancient place filled with Irish history. As Safira says, “I think this house has a personality. It’s hard to describe, but I think it welcomes people.” Grainger’s prose is unremarkable in style, but her character work is spectacular. Each and every individual character feels fully realized and distinct, with flaws and struggles but never without strength, charm, and, above all, resilience. This is the kind of story that leaves readers feeling hopeful while reminding them of all that’s good and beautiful in the world. Upon putting this volume down, readers will likely feel an urge to reach out to their loved ones to grab a coffee and chat.
An inspiring novel of strong female friendships.Pub Date: April 16, 2026
ISBN: 9781917732505
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Gold Harp Media
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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