A clever, complex techno-puzzle with authentic characters and a tight, smartly arranged setup.
A tech firm revives long-deceased historical geniuses for nefarious purposes in Unwin’s futuristic thriller.
Physicist Dr. Art Cornysh has been summoned from Tennessee to Seattle to interview with the Robin Hood–themed Locksley capital markets company, a firm that doesn’t specialize in anything he’s good at or trained in. Art’s life partner, Thea, a math teacher, revels in the opportunity, but Art is skeptical of the offer. At a lavish party, aggressive grooming by a mysterious executive works its magic, and Art finally gives in and accepts their offer. But things in the company start unraveling immediately: When employee Roxanne “Rox” Wells starts toying with facial recognition software and uncovers stunning evidence that Locksley has been cloning historical geniuses, she is abruptly terminated. Rox and co-worker Peter “Bunny” Bunsen team with Art to examine digital side-by-side comparisons of employees (themselves included) whose appearances resemble those of younger versions of “magni” geniuses Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, and others. Together, they must decipher the manipulations conducted for years by Locksley’s CEO, David Maduro, who is taking the business over from his father—whose plan was to regenerate a series of “great minds” from history to build the beginnings of a “master race.” In a nasty, lethal battle of wits and strategic maneuvering, Rox, Bunny, and Art work tirelessly to expose the Maduro family’s scheme to extract DNA samples from the graves of the greatest intellects of all time. The author keeps the chapters briskly clipped, which adds to the suspense factor in this futuristic, high-tech tale of double-crossing duplicates (“with the arm that had been wrapped around her, she’s swept up by the crook of her legs and carried toward the banister. The frenzy of her limbs accelerates as she’s taken, feet first, toward a ten-story plunge”). A final showdown pitting brilliant minds of the past against contemporary thinkers makes for a memorable climax.
A clever, complex techno-puzzle with authentic characters and a tight, smartly arranged setup.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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