A surprisingly heartfelt apocalyptic novel that finds hope at civilization’s finish line.
May’s speculative novel, set on Earth’s final day, explores what people choose to live for when there’s no future left to imagine.
The story centers on Griffin Johnson, a 24-year-old runner in the early 21st century whose last wish is to complete one last marathon in the safe, protected city of Austin, Texas, alongside Sabrina, the woman he loves, and his friends. With the end of the world nearing—its cause attributed to a combination of “technology, greed, fanaticism and self-preservation”—the Austin Marathon unexpectedly becomes a global phenomenon—a celebration and a reckoning that draws tens of thousands of people, many of whom are desperate to find meaning in civilization’s closing hours. May frames the race as an athletic event and a symbolic act of endurance against inevitability. Griffin becomes an unwilling public figure, projected onto screens and transformed into a symbol of hope that he never intended to embody. The novel balances large-scale catastrophe with intimate emotional stakes, focusing less on the mechanics of apocalypse than on the psychology of people confronting finality. May’s prose leans cinematic, frequently shifting between public spectacle and private introspection. Scenes of crowded race preparations, television broadcasts, and restless city streets create an atmosphere that’s both surreal and recognizable, as though contemporary culture has intensified under existential pressure. Beneath the action lies a meditation on performance: how modern society turns even grief into content, heroism into branding, and human vulnerability into entertainment. Yet the novel resists complete cynicism. Griffin’s determination to run, despite the futility surrounding him, becomes an affirmation of connection. Relationships anchor the narrative emotionally—especially the tenderness of Griffin’s bond with Sabrina and his loyalty to his running community. The marathon itself emerges as a metaphor for mortality: exhausting, communal, unpredictable, and finite. What’s ultimately most compelling isn’t the destruction of the world, but the persistence of spiritual longing.
A surprisingly heartfelt apocalyptic novel that finds hope at civilization’s finish line.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2021
ISBN: 9781736316115
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
A haunting, timeless exploration of the evil men do—and the imprint it leaves behind.
A middle-aged woman channels her best Miss Marple when she finds herself facing a nightmare from her past as she seeks to make sense of her present.
Jane Trevally is at a crossroads of sorts. After a traumatic childhood, she sought safety and solace in marriages with wealthy men. Now twice divorced and living with her four dogs in the crumbling English country mansion that is her birthright, she’s feeling the need to do something, to take a job, when one day a runaway dog turns up on her doorstep. The dog is chipped, and with the help of a local vet and her loyal stepson, Dexter Lombardi, Jane traces the dog’s home to the edge of Hampstead Heath, in London—a place that brings back the memory of a terrifying night from her youth, when a handsome man picked her up and took her back to this very house. Everything there felt wrong; she just managed to escape, certain that if she had stayed, she would have died that night. Now, soon after knocking on the door and returning the dog, she discovers that he had run away from an Airbnb near her house, where he had been staying with a young woman who seems to have disappeared. With the help of Dexter; his father, Tony, her second ex-husband; Tony’s former security enforcer, Tobias Wilson; and her own gift for connecting with people, Jane sets out to find the woman, taking her first steps on the path to becoming a private investigator. While Jane serves as the heart of the novel, Jewell also narrates chapters from several other characters’ points of view, all of which chip away at the horror that is the house on the Heath. By slowly revealing past and present simultaneously, Jewell keeps the mystery fresh as she plays with Gothic tropes and the timeless imagery of “a house of horrors” embodying human sin. She doesn’t flinch from exploring the depths of depravity in this house—and its humans.
A haunting, timeless exploration of the evil men do—and the imprint it leaves behind.Pub Date: June 23, 2026
ISBN: 9781668033906
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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