A delightfully informative combination of racing lore and a clever con.
A society lady’s past as a con artist helps right a wrong involving racehorses and grifting.
Gideon Bates may be an attorney from a society family, but his wife, Elizabeth, comes from a family of grifters. She hasn’t put her past entirely behind her but only uses her talents to help people. When racehorse owner Sebastian Nolan hires Gideon to help him arrange a dowry for his 23-year-old daughter, Irene, in order to help her find a suitable husband, he invites Gideon and his family to watch the Belmont Stakes from his box. Irene, the driving force behind Nolan's stable, is devastated when jockey Cal Regan, whom she loves, is first the victim of a dirty racetrack trick and then is badly injured when Irene’s favorite horse, Trench, collapses during his race. Meanwhile, the Bates family hears the story of how Daniel Livingston, another horse owner, was once engaged to Irene’s long-dead mother, Mary, who left him for Nolan, creating a lifelong feud between the two. Both men are gobsmacked when they see a woman at the track who looks just like their lost love accompanied by Elizabeth’s father, a grifter known as the Old Man. Though Irene is pregnant, she hasn’t told Cal, who’s too proud to marry her without money. So the kindhearted Elizabeth, her father, and Mary Nolan's look-alike cook up a con that will solve the young couple's problems. Posing as a wealthy Spanish widow who’ll claim a fortune as soon as a family dispute is solved, the look-alike borrows money from quite a few wealthy men. Elizabeth plans on giving her share of the proceeds to Irene. The things she learns about the past make her even more determined to succeed.
A delightfully informative combination of racing lore and a clever con.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-44057-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.
In 16th-century Madrid, a crypto-Jew with a talent for casting spells tries to steer clear of the Inquisition.
Luzia Cotado, a scullion and an orphan, has secrets to keep: “It was a game she and her mother had played, saying one thing and thinking another, the bits and pieces of Hebrew handed down like chipped plates.” Also handed down are “refranes”—proverbs—in “not quite Spanish, just as Luzia was not quite Spanish.” When Luzia sings the refranes, they take on power. “Aboltar cazal, aboltar mazal” (“A change of scene, a change of fortune”) can mend a torn gown or turn burnt bread into a perfect loaf; “Quien no risica, no rosica” (“Whoever doesn’t laugh, doesn’t bloom”) can summon a riot of foliage in the depths of winter. The Inquisition hangs over the story like Chekhov’s famous gun on the wall. When Luzia’s employer catches her using magic, the ambitions of both mistress and servant catapult her into fame and danger. A new, even more ambitious patron instructs his supernatural servant, Guillén Santángel, to train Luzia for a magical contest. Santángel, not Luzia, is the familiar of the title; he has been tricked into trading his freedom and luck to his master’s family in exchange for something he no longer craves but can’t give up. The novel comes up against an issue common in fantasy fiction: Why don’t the characters just use their magic to solve all their problems? Bardugo has clearly given it some thought, but her solutions aren’t quite convincing, especially toward the end of the book. These small faults would be harder to forgive if she weren’t such a beautiful writer. Part fairy tale, part political thriller, part romance, the novel unfolds like a winter tree bursting into unnatural bloom in response to one of Luzia’s refranes, as she and Santángel learn about power, trust, betrayal, and love.
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781250884251
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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