A bold dystopian tale that predicts a chilling entry for 2020 in the history books.
This dystopian thriller follows a scrappy group of survivors during a Pandemic Era.
In the year 2090, a series of viral plagues has nearly dismantled civilization. People no longer work, living on government rations in semipermanent lockdown. Lily Brayburn is the hopeful center of her community, comprising about 20 people who live in an apartment building. She copes with a dreary life in the Pandemic Era, filled with a Cannibal Gang and victim-snatching “cure crews,” by believing she’ll see her parents again. Most residents respect her leadership. An over-the-hill military veteran named Faulkner is the exception. Though valuable for his sharpshooting skills, he’s a misogynist who loathes women in command. After prisoners escape from the Novel Corporation’s Homeless Detention Center No. 10, Lily finds a teenager hiding in her building. This is 17-year-old Mabel, who is six months pregnant. Though Lily tries to secure Mabel in her room, Faulkner is canny and finds out about her. He has failed to turn any residents against Lily in favor of his own leadership, but he plans to use Mabel’s presence during a routine head count by government officials to his advantage. Meanwhile, Mabel’s lover, Ben, remains at large, trying to avoid the Novel Corporation’s undercover agents, who always want fresh victims on whom to test vaccines. Tameem uses a touch of black humor to follow humanity’s downward spiral in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. A succession of increasingly horrid coronaviruses damages society until the Great Plague of 2082 kills almost everyone. The wealthy, including the racist Gloria Van Leuven, create Environmental Zones to enjoy. Medical specialists like Victor Stark search for cures in a morally bankrupt system that disenfranchises people and then uses their bodies. Faulkner, standing in for the 45th president of the United States, is the author’s “stable genius” who uses misplaced swagger to bully everyone. Some readers may be put off by a pulpy thriller set against the backdrop of a real-world health crisis, but others will find it cathartic. Solid worldbuilding allows the finale to boil over into a potential sequel.
A bold dystopian tale that predicts a chilling entry for 2020 in the history books.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An uncompromising message, delivered via a gripping story with two engaging heroines.
An undergraduate at Brown University unearths the buried history of a Latine artist.
As in her bestselling debut, Olga Dies Dreaming (2022), Gonzalez shrewdly anatomizes racial and class hierarchies. Her bifurcated novel begins at a posh art-world party in 1985 as the title character, a Cuban American land and body artist, garners recognition that threatens the ego of her older, more famous husband, white minimalist sculptor Jack Martin. The story then shifts to Raquel Toro, whose working-class, Puerto Rican background makes her feel out of place among the “Art History Girls” who easily chat with professors and vacation in Europe. Nonetheless, in the spring of 1998, Raquel wins a prestigious summer fellowship at the Rhode Island School of Design, and her faculty adviser is enthusiastic about her thesis on Jack Martin, even if she’s not. Soon she’s enjoying the attentions of Nick Fitzsimmons, a well-connected, upper-crust senior. As Raquel’s story progresses, Anita’s first-person narrative acquires a supernatural twist following the night she falls from the window of their apartment —“jumped? or, could it be, pushed?”—but it’s grimly realistic in its exploration of her toxic relationship with Jack. (A dedication, “In memory of Ana,” flags the notorious case of sculptor Carl Andre, tried and acquitted for the murder of his wife, artist Ana Mendieta.) Raquel’s affair with Nick mirrors that unequal dynamic when she adapts her schedule and appearance to his whims, neglecting her friends and her family in Brooklyn. Gonzalez, herself a Brown graduate, brilliantly captures the daily slights endured by someone perceived as Other, from microaggressions (Raquel’s adviser refers to her as “Mexican”) to brutally racist behavior by the Art History Girls. While a vividly rendered supporting cast urges Raquel to be true to herself and her roots, her research on Martin leads to Anita’s art and the realization that she belongs to a tradition that’s been erased from mainstream art history.
An uncompromising message, delivered via a gripping story with two engaging heroines.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781250786210
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Catnip for anyone who ever wished they could walk around in their favorite book.
A young woman goes on an epic adventure while living out every book lover’s dream.
“All stories are love stories if you love stories,” and Rainy March, a 27-year-old woman living in picturesque Fort Meriwether, Oregon, certainly loves stories. Rainy’s love of literature goes beyond the surface—literally. In her job as a Book Witch, Rainy has the ability to step inside novels with the aid of her magical black umbrella and her feline familiar, Koshka. Rainy’s job, along with the other members of the Ink and Paper Coven including her grandfather, is to save stories from being destroyed by so-called Burners—conservative villains who hop into books to kill off main characters from stories they find offensive to their traditional values—or from fictional characters who accidentally wander into the real world. Rainy’s life is a little more complicated than that of your average Book Witch, however—once, on a mission, she stepped into a Duke of Chicago detective novel and fell in love with the titular Duke. Unfortunately, it’s forbidden for a Book Witch to fall in love with a fictional character lest their love end up in the novel and the canon be changed forever. But then Rainy’s grandfather goes missing on a Book Witch mission, and Rainy and the Duke must team up to track him down, along with a stolen copy of Nancy Drew’s The Secret of the Old Clock that belonged to Rainy’s late mother. Their adventures have them popping in and out of books, including, delightfully, a party scene in The Great Gatsby, and uncovering secrets that could change the course of Rainy’s life. While Shaffer’s writing is a touch too cutesy to mine real emotional depths, the charms of the heroine and the conceit itself make up for it in spades.
Catnip for anyone who ever wished they could walk around in their favorite book.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780593983584
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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