by Mary Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 13, 2025
A solemn, sometimes-sketchy family excavation.
Why did Laura Smith’s mother, Viola Umberto Wilkins, vanish from her 12-year-old daughter’s life? Thirty years later, in search of an explanation, Laura begins to uncover Viola’s complicated, tragic past.
It’s more about the journey than the arrival in Morris’ latest, a somber account of three generations of women, with a focus on abandonment. Laura has spent decades wondering about various explanations for her mother’s disappearance and dealing with the associated pain of unknowing. Now, at 42—the same age Viola was when she left—and for vague reasons, she sets about tracing her mother’s history, traveling to Brindisi, Italy, where the family lived till Laura was 6, when they moved to New Jersey. The Italian Viola had met Laura’s father, a U.S. serviceman, near Naples during World War II, and Laura believed that was where Viola’s roots were. But in Italy, she is able to locate a building called the Red House, the repeated subject of Viola’s paintings, and this discovery, plus conversations with an old man, Tommaso Bassano, reveal startling facts. Viola was Jewish—not Catholic, as Laura thought—and she, her parents, and brother Rudy were displaced from Turin and imprisoned with other Jews at the Red House in 1942, swept up in the violent antisemitic segregation of the era. Now the narrative switches—sometimes confusingly—between Viola’s and Laura’s perspectives. Viola catches the eye of young Italian soldier Tommaso, who loves her and tries to help the starving Jews. As the novel’s historical dimension intensifies, embracing Viola’s parents’ stories, too, its mood darkens and it becomes an ever-harsher consideration of survival. Laura’s pilgrimage to Italy helps her heal and understand her mother better, but other facets of the story remain unresolved. It’s a melancholy spiral of a narrative, at times slack and repetitive and with loose ends, but the unusual historical aspect lends gravitas.
A solemn, sometimes-sketchy family excavation.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780385544986
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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by Elin Hilderbrand & Shelby Cunningham ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 2025
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
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New York Times Bestseller
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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SEEN & HEARD
by Ken Follett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 23, 2025
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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