A well-developed, deftly plotted Cold War novel with a strong emotional center.
In Norsworthy’s historical novel, the Cold War U-2 spy plane incident provides the backdrop to a struggling marriage.
Americans Eleanor and Talbot meet in Florence just after World War II—Eleanor came to Italy to study sculpture in 1939 and got stuck when war broke out, and Talbot was there as part of a U.S. intelligence group within the U.S. Army. They eventually marry and move to Washington, D.C., where Talbot joins the CIA and Eleanor, unable to find work in the art world, settles for a job in the Arlington Public Library system. Fifteen years later, distance has grown between them, and while Eleanor turns a blind eye to Talbot’s numerous affairs, the cracks in their seemingly idyllic life start to show. On the night of Eleanor’s 40th birthday party, an operation led by Talbot goes badly awry when a surveillance plane is shot down over the Soviet Union just weeks before Eisenhower and Khrushchev are scheduled to have peace talks. Talbot’s extramarital activities come back to haunt him, and a foundational plot twist midway through the novel completely shifts the narrative that readers thought they were following, to great effect. Amid the political intrigue, Norsworthy ensures the story’s focus remains on Eleanor and Talbot’s relationship; chapters written from both of their perspectives deepen the context of their relationship and add to the emotional stakes. The real-life events serving as a backdrop for the story are thoroughly researched, and the robust cast of supporting characters is brought to life in a vividly rendered historical setting (“Anxiety was high that the Soviets had more missiles and were building bombers so fast the United States would never catch up”). The narrative occasionally drags in the second half of the book, over-emphasizing the logistics of various aspects of spycraft employed by the CIA and the USSR, but overall, the pacing works effectively to keep readers invested and to take Talbot and Eleanor through realistic inner journeys as they contemplate the future of their marriage.
A well-developed, deftly plotted Cold War novel with a strong emotional center.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781685136949
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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
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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