An addictive page-turner with rich historical details and vivid, flawed characters.
Greed, political corruption, and lust propel this dark novel set in Buffalo, New York.
Arthur Pendle and Terence Penrose are roommates and best friends during college and law school in New Haven, Connecticut. After graduation, they travel together to Buffalo, where, in 1889, they open Pendle & Penrose, Attorneys at Law, a flourishing practice that for eight years provides both with a substantial living. Terry is the rainmaker and Arthur is the legal whiz—until 1897, when Terry is offered the position of district attorney for Erie County. As Terry’s star rises, Arthur’s solo law practice dwindles. Then Terry makes an offer Arthur cannot afford to refuse. And as Arthur’s income increases exponentially, his commitment to the righteousness of the legal profession slips into history. Back at home, Arthur’s wife, Cassie, an offspring of one of New England’s wealthiest families, has her own issues. Despite the couple’s high social standing, Cassie is emotionally insecure and uncomfortable with people. Regrettably, she has found a source of comfort—opium and a variety of other drugs of the day. Across town, in an avant-garde community known as Ashwood, are Alicia and Edward Miller. Their fraying marriage contributes to the next phase of Arthur’s ultimate downfall. Once he meets the tempting Alicia at the Ashwood Social Club (“On the dance floor, Alicia Hall Miller’s dainty feet and petite frame made her look like a ballerina, small and strong and lithe”), his enchantment with her becomes obsessive. Brighton’s gritty series opener rips off Buffalo’s elite, shiny facade during the Gilded Age. A skillful storyteller, the author mixes sardonic commentary and well-scripted dialogue to control a plotline in which the primary characters become inexorably trapped by their own greatest weaknesses. Lead protagonist Arthur is the most fully developed. Readers are drawn step by step through the moral deterioration of a man driven to reckless decisions by arrogance, a craving for wealth, and a passion for Alicia. Unfortunately, Cassie, potentially a complex character, is only minimally explored. There are no heroes here, although there are a few survivors. And after all the emotional turmoil, jealously, violence, and broken lives, the riveting narrative ends with a humorous, intriguing wink to readers.
An addictive page-turner with rich historical details and vivid, flawed characters.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9798986517803
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Copper Nickel Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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