An out-of-this-world tale grounded in day-to-day realities.
As a rogue planet draws near Earth, life in London proceeds as normal—until it doesn’t.
The eldest of the four Minton sisters, 22-year-old Aaliyah is getting married, exposing rifts in the family—the ways they’ve drifted apart and failed to communicate. But the rushed wedding is about to become the least of their concerns, because the planet Hero is moving closer to Earth, and though scientists have assured the public there will be no collision, Hero will cause problems no one has been able to predict, though father Marcus Minton has tried his best with prepping and drills for the collapse of civilization. When calamity strikes, the family is separated. Sixteen-year-old Tanice and Chantale, the baby of the family at 7, are stranded, trapped at the wedding venue; Aaliyah, 17-year-old Briar, and their mother, Kim, a doctor, are on the road; and Marcus is alone on the streets, searching for his family. As everyone tries to reconnect physically, they each face their own secrets and the separate paths they’ve taken. Briar falls in with a cult receiving messages from aliens, Aaliyah and Kim attempt to put Kim’s medical knowledge into practice, and Marcus tries to atone for past mistakes. While the book is set at the end of the world, the apocalypse is only a backdrop for an exploration of the relationships among the Mintons and of their inner worlds. Touching on race relations, policing, bad decisions, and more, this is a breathtaking work that uses the tropes of science fiction and apocalyptic thrillers to deliver an exploration of a family of sisters growing up and of parents simultaneously pulling away and holding on. Told in a confident, lyrical voice with a sharp focus on characters and society, this narrative reveals that no matter how alien the circumstances, we will always be human.
An out-of-this-world tale grounded in day-to-day realities.Pub Date: July 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781668203460
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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
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