A dark, invitingly whimsical tale that grows more mysterious as the pages go by.
A surreal adventure novel set in 18th-century Europe from debut author Rogers.
Dr. Jackson “Jack” Predinger is a Jewish physician who lives in Sweden during the time of Frederick the Great. Jack not only has an intimate knowledge of several religious texts, he also understands advanced, anachronistic concepts of psychology. High society women flock to his practice to see what aid he can provide. One such person is a beautiful woman named Loretta Vandermeer, distraught following the death of her husband. If only there were a way to contact him. Jack believes this may be possible through a Russian medium, who belongs to a particularly severe, self-mutilating religious sect (they remove their genitals as a means for purification) known as the Skoptsy. But if Loretta and Jack want to benefit from this Skoptsy’s abilities, they’ll need to venture into the unknown. A journey is organized even as “travel in those days was irregular. Yet regular enough.” Soon the duo encounters an unsavory figure named Sammy, who is, in short, evil. Sammy, who joins them on their journey, does nothing to improve their prospects. Things get stranger and stranger as the characters travel on. Aspects of a Western develop when Sammy is pursued by a posse, and Dr. Jack makes comments like “You know they hang horse thieves, don’t you, Loretta!” At just over 100 pages, the story moves quickly with aspects that are historical (the Skoptsy were a real sect) and bizarre (a castle resembling something from a Bosch painting). It all amounts to a truly wild narrative that is occasionally bogged down by backstory. For instance, that Sammy was the youngest of three children doesn’t add much to the fact that he will later ride a horse with a “large decaying man” behind him. The more pressing issue is where the horse ride is ultimately going to end, something readers will want to see for themselves.
A dark, invitingly whimsical tale that grows more mysterious as the pages go by.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 125
Publisher: Beatnik Cowboy Press
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.
A dark fantasy set on the Yale campus ends with a bang.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern of Lethe House, one of Yale’s storied secret societies, has been to hell and back. That was in Hell Bent (2023), the middle book in Bardugo’s Ninth House trilogy, where the secret societies wield not just temporal power but magic as well. Hell Bent ended with Alex and her friends rescuing her crush, mentor, and fellow Lethe officer, Daniel “Darlington” Arlington V, from eternal torment. One small wrinkle: The demon Golgarot used Alex’s blood to wedge a door open between Hell and New Haven, and his minions are slipping through. Also, one of the group has turned into a vampire, and Darlington is now half demon. “He’d given up some part of himself to preserve the rest of his human soul. He’d become both prisoner and warden.” As the final book opens, the exhausted crew are hunting yet another monster. They can’t keep this up forever; they will have to find a way to close the portal. Alex has the energetic, driven melancholy of the hard-boiled, dark fantasy heroine she is. She believes “magic is real, but safe is make-believe,” as her roommate puts it. An open hellmouth, a supportive scholar, a vampire whose story arcs precariously toward redemption, a gentleman fiend who gets literally horny when aroused, a California girl with rare supernatural powers who cracks wise as she fights fiends—the series has a lot in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spawn, but Bardugo’s way with words and her keen social observation keep the book from feeling derivative. A demon’s classic New England house is decorated with “ruthlessly inoffensive watercolor seascapes”; Lethe’s board president “wore the new uniform of Wall Street: a dress shirt, khakis, and a fleece with a Yale Y embroidered over the heart, as if he were on his way to a hostile takeover followed by some light rock climbing.” Will Alex and her friends get the door shut without losing Darlington? Bardugo injects her protagonist with such a convincing mix of cynicism and hope that failure seems like a distinct possibility.
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781250884312
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.
The World Trade Center attacks are at the center of an intricate, twisty family drama spanning decades in both directions.
“You could brace for your sister to die of a terminal illness, only to have your healthy sibling killed in a random car wreck. You could carry a baby safely to term and then, on a bright blue day in September, walk into a building that collapsed beneath your feet.” Or you could be a character in a Jodi Picoult novel and face all of the above and much, much more. Fans of My Sister’s Keeper (2004) will notice a reference to that novel in the preceding quote and be glad to hear a character from that book is back. During the Covid-19 pandemic, former teenage delinquent Jesse Fitzgerald, now a detective on the Providence, Rhode Island, police force, meets Molly Ambrose, a 19-year-old prodigy who runs the state’s emergency preparedness and response program. “Despite the fact that there were fifteen years between us and we both had enough baggage to fill a cargo hold,” as Molly puts it, the two fall madly in love. The baggage she’s referring to includes, on her side, a mother who died on 9/11 when Molly was less than three months old. Picoult supplies her signature delightful banter and gift for depicting passion and romance to win the reader’s sympathy for this possibly questionable match between dedicated public servants, whose favorite game at bedtime is “Who can think of the most terrifying worst-case scenario?” Very little more can be revealed without spoilers, but trigger warnings for this book would be a long list indeed, ranging from suicide and filicide to rape and mental illness (welcome to Picoultland!). Subplots visit evangelical and Navajo cultures as well as the ins and outs of polygraphy. Make sure to read the afterword in which Picoult explains her real-life sources of inspiration.
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9780593726259
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
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