High-octane entertainment.
A decades-old grudge and a potential new war in Europe spell trouble for the CIA in this fast-moving thriller.
In current-day Barcelona, Spain, Mitch Rapp just wants to spend time with his girlfriend, Greta Ohlmeyer, who knows he’s a killer for the CIA. Greta’s grandfather is a prominent banker who has connections with interim CIA Director Thomas Stansfield. But someone is threatening all the Ohlmeyers, and Mitch will do anything to protect Greta. His fans already know what impressive talents he has: He’s fluent in French, Arabic, and Italian, and he speaks passable Persian. More germane to the story, he’s abundantly capable of speed and violence. His most fearsome weapon is his mind, according to the narrator, but the former traits are what draw the blood. Rapp says he’s not a killer for hire, but he surely can dispatch the bad guys. Indeed, “once Rapp decided to kill someone, very few people could change his mind.” His CIA handler sends him to Moscow to help prevent a war between Russia and Latvia, because the job requires his—ahem—nondiplomatic skills. Unsettled scores drive the story from the beginning, when in 1945 Stansfield kills a patrol of Soviets who are trying to claim 100 tons of German uranium oxide. But one Soviet survives, and decades later Stansfield, now in the CIA, may yet suffer retribution. And Rapp, the CIA’s most talented off-the-books assassin, also dishes out some personal payback. Of course it can’t be easy. Only a fool would willingly enter Lubyanka in Moscow, the intelligence service’s headquarters, because it’s like sneaking into hell. The local joke is that Lubyanka is Russia’s tallest building because you can see Siberia from the prison cells in its basement. Not knowing if he will come out alive, Rapp goes after a target there and is treated to a rambunctious elevator ride. Imagine being in a confined space with a mortal enemy just as tough as you are—what fun!
High-octane entertainment.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9781668045879
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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