A dramatic and often darkly humorous debut thriller.
In Skinner’s thriller, a candidate for an academic position in a Texas border town is kidnapped in Mexico.
William Quigley is an assistant professor at Bravo University, which is located just a few miles from the Texas-Mexico border. Tasked with escorting job candidate Minerva Mondragón during her on-campus job interview, Quigley’s eagerness to impress leads him to make a series of decisions that spiral out of control. Quigley picks up Mondragón at the airport and attempts to charm her with references to Graham Greene (“Just look at that terminal—tropical ramshackle. Total Greeneland!”). She suggests crossing the border for lunch in Mexico, and he agrees, even though he has misgivings. Minerva vanishes during the meal, having been abducted while searching for the restroom. Quigley returns to campus as Minerva tries to escape her captors. Skinner has crafted memorable leads in Quigley and Mondragón, whose stories unfold in alternating chapters. The supporting characters, including bored customs agents and disguised cartel lookouts, add to the narrative’s quirkiness. The novel satirizes academia but also delves into border issues, and though the work can be funny, it doesn’t shy away from the dark side of this subject, including the grim realities of human trafficking and the corruption of law enforcement. What makes the book especially powerful is its mix of tones as Skinner skillfully blends dark humor with dread; the absurdities of academic life—tenure-track interviews, awkward faculty interactions, petty departmental politics—stand in stark contrast to the danger unfolding in Mexico. The narrative remains tense from start to finish, avoiding any predictability or cliche. Skinner depicts the mechanisms of academia with the same gravity as cartel violence, suggesting that both are driven by power, ego, and a dangerous blindness to consequence. The novel’s pacing is energetic, drawing readers in with sharp wit and gradually revealing a much darker undercurrent. This is a novel that lingers after its final page.
A dramatic and often darkly humorous debut thriller.Pub Date: March 31, 2025
ISBN: 9798893750072
Page Count: 243
Publisher: Arte Público
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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