An engaging drama that will keep readers guessing.
In Lockehart’s novel, when an FBI agent’s widow tries to purchase an old Victorian mansion, she runs up against thieves, con men, and murderers.
Miriam Wheatley is looking to start anew in a small, quiet town in Virginia. After rejecting several properties, she meets again with her real estate agent, Charlie Holmes. They arrive at the final house on his list, an old mansion that needs work but has lots of potential. It has not been lived in for eight or nine years since the previous owner, George Sherwood, died. Dozens of stray cats seem to have made their home on the 9-acre property and in the surrounding woods. Miriam is entranced with it all—this is exactly what she wants. She makes an offer on the spot, and after a price is agreed upon, Miriam writes a check for the deposit. But trouble is brewing; someone begins following Miriam in a pickup truck, and someone else takes a shot at her. When she returns to her hotel, she discovers a man in her room. It is the same person she noticed at the cafe who appeared to be watching her. Enter Scott Morgenstein, an FBI agent who partnered with her deceased husband, Phil, who was killed in action. Coincidentally, the house Miriam wants to buy is located in an area that has been under FBI scrutiny for a variety of financial misdeeds. When dead bodies start to appear, things really heat up. Lockehart’s complicated murder mystery places Miriam at the center of an increasingly expanding web of evildoers. Attempted murders, dead bodies, and a frightening kidnapping episode build the excitement (the tension is occasionally relieved by a budding romance between Miriam and Scott). The easy-flowing prose is detail oriented: “Carved woodwork adorned the fireplace with a custom-tiled interface and a massive marble mantelpiece that proudly introduced it to anyone who entered.” Lockehart has a tendency to repeat facts and details, but the twisty plot, featuring plenty of surprises and some remarkable treasures, ensures the narrative moves at a good pace.
An engaging drama that will keep readers guessing.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
High-concept and highly entertaining.
Fiction writers compete to finish a famous author’s abandoned novel.
Seven writers, all but one published, have received invitations to spend the weekend with crime novelist Arthur Fletch, the world’s most successful author, on his private island off the coast of Scotland. When they arrive at his cliffside castle, they expect to take part in one of the literary salons for which Fletch is famous; instead, they’re greeted by his agent, who informs them that Fletch is dead. Why has there been nothing about this in the press? Because “there are some…loose ends that must be tied up first.” Fletch has left his eagerly anticipated final novel unfinished, so the agent has summoned the writers to the island for a competition: One of them will get to complete Fletch’s book. As premises go, this one’s a humdinger, courtesy of fantasy writer V.E. Schwab and YA author Cat Clarke, here joining forces as Clarke. The story contains an amusing throughline about the indignity of being an uncelebrated novelist; as the agent tells the assembled writers, the contest winner will receive both cash and something equally valuable: “a way out of the midlist.” The novel’s wandering perspective allows each writer to vent their private frustrations, especially with the publishing industry and with the book world’s genre hierarchy (the YA writer among the competitors understands that she and the romance writer are “supposed to support each other against the general snobbishness of the other genres”). Readers who have come for the crimes and the twists, both of which are plentiful, might grow impatient with all the characters’ backstories, but these readers will likely warm to the shop talk, which at its funniest plays like a kvetchy midlist-writers’ support group.
High-concept and highly entertaining.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780063444614
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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