A blackly humorous feat.
For one family-held business, personal decisions have global implications.
The novel opens in Manhattan with the death of 95-year-old Werther Maybach Meyer, the most powerful American stakeholder in Omnium, a century-old, family-owned international corporation with banking, financial, and media arms. Who will take charge now that Werther is gone? In his lifetime, Werther was a dodgy figure, having been involved in international money laundering, and he had understandably racked up some enemies. Reports the book’s omniscient narrator: “Word of Werther Maybach Meyer’s demise, though not unexpected, was of great interest in certain government, criminal, and elite financial circles,” and his death does indeed set off a chain of events with geographically far-reaching repercussions. This years-spanning novel takes readers around the world (Germany, London, Moscow) and back again, during which time the body count rises. The novel’s Manhattan-set chapters center on Werther’s “charity-case niece,” Betty Maybach, who is underestimated by those around her at their peril, and on the people of Albion, part of Omnium’s book division. Throughout the Albion chapters, author Dunne, the former head of his namesake imprint at St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan, unleashes, with satirical pistons firing, his take on the state of American book publishing. (Albion has a sensitivity department with “volunteer outriders” known as the Vigilance Committee.) Readers should anticipate meta touches; like this novel, the one that an Albion insider is writing concerns “a bunch of different things. Mystery, intrigue, a few murders, a love story.” Dunne’s novel can occasionally feel like a narrative exercise in the butterfly effect, which is a touchstone in the book, and odds are good that readers will be less absorbed by chapters revolving around finance-world machinations than by more character-driven sections devoted to publishing-world skulduggery. Nevertheless, they should expect a high return on investment.
A blackly humorous feat.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9798874863838
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
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
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
