Atmospheric, historically interesting escapism.
In a spy thriller set in Chicago during the Red Scare of the early 1950s, Fields combines a paean to feminist empowerment with old-fashioned romance, both centered on a female scientist.
During World War II, Rosalind Porter, now 30, was the only woman—and Enrico Fermi's favorite—among 50 people working on what she calls "the project." But the dropping of the A-bomb and its human cost devastated her. Then her lover, Thomas Weaver, a British scientist with the project, broke her heart, not only dumping her for another woman but, Roz suspects, also writing the report that ruined her career. Four years later, she yearns to return to science but has been reduced to selling jewelry at Marshall Field’s. Then Weaver re-appears, begging for a second chance, though at first he resists explaining why he left or why he’s returned. Roz is struggling to resist her strong feelings for Weaver when she’s approached by FBI agent Charlie Szydlo, who asks her to keep seeing Weaver and pass on what she learns. Charlie suspects Weaver is giving scientific secrets to the Soviet Union. Compelled by a mix of patriotism and desire, Roz reluctantly agrees to see Weaver. After they have passionate sex, he acknowledges that there are secrets he'll eventually need to share. Rosalyn feels torn. She loves him deeply but isn't sure she trusts him. Nevertheless, she agrees to hide his safe deposit box key without telling Charlie, for whom she is also developing feelings. After all, not only is he handsome, despite a ruined hand—the result of his stay in a brutal Japanese POW camp—but he's also reliable in ways Weaver is not. Both men adore Roz for her Hedy Lamarr beauty and brains (which the real Lamarr also had), but neither is anxious to share the secret demons tormenting him. After creating intriguing, complex characters—particularly enigmatic Weaver—Fields rushes the obvious espionage plot toward both a professional and romantic ending for Roz that is every woman’s wish fulfillment.
Atmospheric, historically interesting escapism.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-08533-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
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
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.
And now for some lessons in poetry and typesetting.
After Lessons in Chemistry (2022), a debut that became one of the most popular books of recent years, Garmus applies her unique comic sensibility to the story of Batter Gray, a man named after a family dog of mythic talents. A poetry maven who was reading Auden as a fourth grader, he was raised by a type-designer mother and historian father who dearly hoped he would choose some more viable profession than poetry. But via an amazing stroke of luck, he lands a job after college at Peck & Peck, an illustrious literary journal located in a beautiful building in New York City. He’s at the very bottom of the complex and dysfunctional totem pole, making copies in the basement, struggling not to run afoul of the cantankerous editor-in-chief, Salton Peck, or his smarmy assistant, Dexter York, both of whom have taken an instant dislike to our hero (and can never get his name right. Few people can). And to be honest, Batter is not without his flaws. The novel bogs down a bit in the middle, with Salton constantly excoriating his staff in ALL CAPS and much ado over the possibility that submissions have been taken outside the building, which is forbidden. Along the way, many, many famous poets are name-checked, as are many typefaces, since Batter has been raised to instantly identify a font in the wild. The best example of this occurs during his brief sojourn in jail: “The thing I kind of admired about Motherfucker II, besides his manners, was this huge tattoo he had on his neck that read I will fuck you up in ITC Bolt. Call me my mother’s son, but whoever inked it nailed the kerning.” The narrative picks up steam toward the end, as bad guys become good guys, mysteries are solved, and Batter throws one hell of a party.
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781668251065
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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