A spellbinding novel set in the frozen Arctic and in London during the height of murder mania.
In 1850, after learning about her younger sister’s mysterious death aboard a British expedition vessel, Maud Horton takes it upon herself to track down the killer and exact her revenge.
Though they were attached at the hip as young girls, Maude and Constance Horton could not have been more different. While Maude was scientifically minded and seemed content to spend the rest of her days working in their grandfather’s apothecary, Constance was a romantic at heart and yearned to see the world beyond the grimy streets of London. In an act of rebellion, Constance disguised herself as a young man and stowed away on the Makepeace, a ship destined for the desolate sea lane known as the Northwest Passage. It was a risky move, to say the least, and the journey eventually led to her death. When Maude receives her sister’s effects two years later, she can't shake the feeling that the truth is being kept from her, especially when she reads Constance’s increasingly alarming diary entries. With evidence pointing toward Edison Stowe, the ship’s scientist, having murdered Constance, Maude decides to join him on his latest grisly business venture: a rail tour of public hangings in England. In a novel packed with fascinating characters with a wide array of motivations, Maude takes a back seat to both Constance and Edison. Though the narrator is charming and clever, readers will find themselves wanting to spend more time sailing on the Makepeace with Constance or following Edison through smog-choked streets. Pook’s writing really shines in her descriptions of London. People's obsession with murder was at an all-time high there, and huge profits were being made from public hangings, amid other grotesque trivializations of death. Pook paints a macabre image of a time when death was often more valuable than life itself.
A spellbinding novel set in the frozen Arctic and in London during the height of murder mania.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781982180546
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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
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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