An enthralling blend of mystery and SF with a striking hero.
In this 1950s-set, SF–infused novel, a physicist discovers a personal connection to the otherworldly object he’s investigating.
The CIA doesn’t know what to make of the old wreckage of a domed container, possibly a cargo pod. Someone unearthed it near the Nevada Test Site, making communist-hating America fear the Russians have been up to no good. Answers may lie with a metal disk found inside the container and with four sets of coordinates marking areas surrounding the wreckage. Dr. Frank Sartori of the Atomic Energy Commission scours Western desert landscapes for each location. What he discovers sparks wild theories, such as the pod is extraterrestrial and carried a now-missing passenger. But it’s the strange symbols on the disk that the physicist finds truly spellbinding. They’re identical to the ones on the aluminum attaché case of his uncle, the man who raised him and cryptically asserted that they both were “not of this world.” Working with Bob “Bobcat” Babcock, a member of the Army Corps of Engineers, Sartori aims to unravel the mysteries of the pod, which is seemingly capable of creating energy from magnetic fields, and deciphering his bizarre link to it. Costanzo’s story deftly drops assorted puzzles at Sartori’s feet. Along with his AEC investigation, he must deal with his dreams, which teem with inexplicable images (for example, an unknown man at a bus stop), and his uncle’s abrupt disappearance. The tale is generally easygoing, as the protagonist doesn’t face sinister forces. But he does struggle to trust people, even immensely likable Bobcat and a local newspaper reporter named Kate Wilson who doubles as a potential romantic interest. The author couples a measured pace with vibrant prose, such as nuclear tests producing “a glowing orange sphere inside of an iridescent, billowing gray cloud.” Costanzo also aptly infuses real life into the narrative, from people constantly worrying about atomic bombs and radiation to characters mentioning famous baseball teams and players and TV series. The superb ending resolves some of the questions that readers will be asking.
An enthralling blend of mystery and SF with a striking hero.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-578-33953-5
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2022
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
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