With raw eloquence, Harper finds his characters’ humanity in the context of a mostly pitiless world
Young gang members find their sense of identity within a criminal family.
Familiarity with She Rides Shotgun (2017), Harper’s Edgar Award–winning debut about gang warfare in California’s Inland Empire, is not necessary to follow this sequel. What is necessary is a strong stomach for graphic violence and toxic masculinity summed up by the Combine family’s mantra, “Blood is love.” Initiation into the family involves receiving a heart tattoo that combines ink with the blood of a murdered Combine member. At age 7, Luke Crosswhite witnessed his father, Bobby, the leader of the Combine, kick a man to death in a bowling alley parking lot. Bobby went to prison (where he remains), and Luke was sent to Colorado to live with his long-absent mother’s law-abiding relatives. His uncle Del is running the Combine for Bobby—think theft and drug-dealing with occasional gang warfare thrown in—when 19-year-old Luke returns as the unlikely heir apparent, a college dropout still struggling with debilitating flashbacks to his father's crime. Luke finds himself torn. His basic decency and sensitivity are challenged by the adrenaline rush that acts of extreme machismo offer. Affection for a lovable pit bull named Manson (the novel’s only joke) plays a central role in the battle within his soul, but the pull of being part of a family, however defective, is hard for the lonely outsider to resist. In contrast, Luke’s childhood playmate Callie, now a small-time drug dealer, has always been part of the family's operations. She yearns to escape with her drugged-out, sweet-natured boyfriend to a life she imagines outside the gang. As Luke and Callie make fateful decisions, the larger, scarier gang Aryan Steel threatens the Combine’s autonomy while California wildfires rage beyond human control. A novel in which needless deaths pile up somehow manages to be heartbreaking yet oddly hopeful, even a tad sentimental.
With raw eloquence, Harper finds his characters’ humanity in the context of a mostly pitiless worldPub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780316581400
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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