Tense, readable, and relevant.
An uproar over an abortion threatens a judge’s career.
In Union Springs, Alabama, 13-year-old Nova Jones desperately wants to terminate the pregnancy her school nurse has confirmed. Knowing her personal and professional risk, Dr. Bria Gaines performs the procedure and is soon arrested for committing the Class A felony of performing an abortion, punishable by 99 years in prison. The law allows no exceptions even for rape or incest, and the doctor looks certain to be convicted. “I don’t have a prayer,” Gaines tells her lawyer. Presiding over the case is Circuit Judge Mary Stone, who is up for re-election later in the year. She is a Black woman who graduated at the top of her class at the University of Alabama Law School and who hosts Saturday morning community breakfasts at her farm. The case will split the town, and Stone is under heavy pressure from both sides to recuse herself: “Mark my words, Mary. This case will destroy you,” her sister says. The district attorney wants Gaines to be found guilty and punished to the max. A sanctimonious pastor tries to shame Judge Stone into quitting the case, and he’s one of many. “Don’t you follow those women into hell,” an anonymous caller says. Even the governor gets into the act, threatening to call in the National Guard. But Judge Stone stands firm. “I am Judge Mary Stone, and this is my courtroom,” she declares, and her obsession is to ensure a fair trial. Soon almost everything that can go wrong goes wrong, and Union Springs goes “batshit crazy”—with outside help. “A lot of money will be spent” to defeat Mary Stone in the upcoming election, and her judicial career won’t be worth a plate of week-old grits. Twists abound that ratchet up the tension as well as readers’ sympathy for the story’s women. Some of the South’s benighted racial past resurfaces, mixing with the post-Roe reality that divides much of America. The Davis-Patterson collaboration delivers first-class courtroom drama, small-town excitement, and strong characters all wrapped in a moral dilemma.
Tense, readable, and relevant.Pub Date: March 9, 2026
ISBN: 9780316579834
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.
Could making a movie about the disappearance of five women from an island reawaken an evil presence there?
Five dresses hang from the topmost limbs of an oak on a remote island in a Vermont lake. That memorable image marks a mystery from a century ago, when five women believed to have been part of a commune vanished forever. As this novel opens, another group gathers on the island to make a movie based on that tale. Marin Keane, the narrator, is surprised but thrilled to find herself cast as one of the leads; she’s a struggling actor whose biggest part so far has been “Bridesmaid with Eczema” in a drug commercial, so playing Daisy Rue, whose haunting diary is the basis for the movie’s script, could be a career-making move. Ronan Peters, the writer-director, is talented and, Marin notes, hot. His reason for gathering the cast on the island is a kind of boot-camp rehearsal: They’ll spend a week living there, wearing period clothes, and managing without internet or phone service. Oh, and holding séances. What could go wrong? Marin quickly meets the other women in the cast: regal character actor Julianne Brown, cool and competent Heather Benchley, bratty former Disney star Susie Hutchinson, and, striking awe in all of them, Violet Wright, a much-awarded Meryl Streep-ish figure who will play the woman who brought the others to the island, which she owned. They get to work, but soon enough someone disappears. The book’s plot, like the movie’s script, largely follows Daisy’s journal, and since the reader is supplied with pages-long sections of that journal, there’s not much suspense about what will happen next. There are some effective set pieces, such as the group’s first séance. But in its last quarter, the plot collapses into a muddle of #MeToo vengeance, improbable secrets, and jarring character reveals that is, as Marin says, “the most Scooby-Doo thing I’ve ever heard.”
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798217044092
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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