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
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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