Fiction, Nonfiction, Children'sand YA Books
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Featuring 373 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children'sand YA Books KIRKUSVOL. LXXXVII, NO. 15 | 1 AUGUST 2019 REVIEWS p All Night Issue U SPECIAL COVERAGE OF BOOKS THAT WILL KEEP YOU TURNING PAGES UNTIL THE WEE HOURS from the editor’s desk: Chairman Bedtime Stories HERBERT SIMON President & Publisher BY TOM BEER MARC WINKELMAN # Chief Executive Officer MEG LABORDE KUEHN [email protected] Photo courtesy John Paraskevas courtesy Photo One of the formative reading experiences of my adult life came the Editor-in-Chief TOM BEER summer before my 21st birthday. I was working days canvassing door to [email protected] Vice President of Marketing door for an environmental group, then rushing home in the evenings to SARAH KALINA [email protected] curl up with Salman Rushdie’s tour-de-force 1981 novel, Midnight’s Children. Managing/Nonfiction Editor I’d never read anything quite like it: a vast scope (it covers the momen- ERIC LIEBETRAU [email protected] tous partition of India and its aftermath, hopscotching among Bombay, Fiction Editor LAURIE MUCHNICK Lahore, Kashmir, and elsewhere), a story rich in memorable characters [email protected] Children’s Editor (beginning with narrator Saleem Sinai, he of the large nose) and wild ele- VICKY SMITH ments of magical realism (telepathic powers, for example), all conveyed in [email protected] Young Adult Editor Tom Beer Rushdie’s bravura prose. (Kirkus, in a starred review, calls it “a big striped LAURA SIMEON [email protected] balloon of a book, often dizzying with talent.”) As tired as I was after a long, sometimes discour- Editor at Large MEGAN LABRISE aging day pounding the pavement, I would stay up every night reading until 1 or 2 a.m., trans- [email protected] Vice President of Kirkus Indie fixed by this electrifying novel. KAREN SCHECHNER [email protected] I still long to get lost in a book the way I did in Midnight’s Children. And that spirit infuses Senior Indie Editor the Up All Night issue of , in which we celebrate the books that keep us up past DAVID RAPP Kirkus Reviews [email protected] our bedtimes. For many of us, those are mysteries and thrillers, novels where suspense makes us Indie Editor MYRA FORSBERG turn the pages and reluctant to put the book down and turn out the light. In this issue we talk [email protected] Associate Manager of Indie with authors Ruth Ware, Alafair Burke, and Adrian McKinty, all of whom have new novels out KATERINA PAPPAS that fit the bill. [email protected] Editorial Assistant For other readers, true crime is stranger and more compelling than fiction; our interview CHELSEA ENNEN [email protected] with Casey Cep illuminates her new book, Furious Hours, about the Alabama murder mystery Mysteries Editor THOMAS LEITCH that obsessed author Harper Lee in the 1970s—though all her research and To Kill a Mockingbird Contributing Editor reporting never led to the book she hoped to write, her own version of In Cold Blood, the true- GREGORY McNAMEE Copy Editor crime classic she had worked on with Truman Capote more than a decade earlier. BETSY JUDKINS Designer Even young adult readers—especially young adult readers?—delight in burning the midnight ALEX HEAD oil with their own, age-appropriate thrillers and mysteries. In this issue we talk with Derek Mil- Director of Kirkus Editorial LAUREN BAILEY man, whose Swipe Right for Murder involves a chilling case of mistaken identity that occurs on, you [email protected] Production Editor guessed it, a dating app. And Michelle Knudsen tells us aboutThe Curse CATHERINE BRESNER [email protected] of the Evil Librarian, a comic horror novel that finds her high school pro- Website and Software Developer tagonists doing battle with literal demons led by the librarian of the title. PERCY PEREZ [email protected] Of course, mysteries, thrillers, and true crime don’t have a lock on Advertising Director MONIQUE STENSRUD the Up All Night market. Whatever book captures your imagination— [email protected] Advertising Associate historical fiction, biography, memoir, fantasy—is the one that will keep TATIANA ARNOLD you reading night and day, whenever you can carve out the time. As for [email protected] Graphic Designer me, my Up All Night reading experiences are mostly a thing of the past. LIANA WALKER [email protected] For one thing, I don’t read in bed anymore—bad for sleep habits, the Controller MICHELLE GONZALES experts tell us—and I’m not much of a night owl in middle age. But if a [email protected] book is really, really good, you can be sure I’ll be up early in the morning, for customer service or subscription questions, coffee in hand, ready to dive back in. please call 1-800-316-9361 Print indexes: www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/print-indexes Submission Guidelines: www.kirkusreviews.com/about/submission-guidlines Kirkus Blog: www.kirkusreviews.com/blog Subscriptions: www.kirkusreviews.com/subscription Advertising Opportunities: www.kirkusreviews.com/about/advertising- Newsletters: www.kirkusreviews.com/subscription/newsletter/add Cover design by opportunities Liana Walker 2 | 1 august 2019 | from the editor’s desk | kirkus.com | you can now youpurchase can now bookspurchase online booksat online kirkus.comat kirkus.com contents the up all night issue fiction young adult INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS ...........................................................4 INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS ....................................................... 141 REVIEWS ...............................................................................................4 REVIEWS ........................................................................................... 141 EDITOR’S NOTE.....................................................................................6 EDITOR’S NOTE................................................................................. 142 INTERVIEW: RUTH WARE .................................................................14 INTERVIEW: MICHELLE KNUDSEN ...............................................144 INTERVIEW: ALAFAIR BURKE ..........................................................18 INTERVIEW: DEREK MILMAN ........................................................148 INTERVIEW: ADRIAN MCKINTY ......................................................22 INTERVIEW: KRISTINA PEREZ ........................................................152 5 RIVETING LATE-NIGHT NOVELS ................................................. 28 5 SPINE-TINGLING YA THRILLERS ................................................156 MYSTERY .............................................................................................42 SHELF SPACE: THE LAST BOOKSTORE .........................................165 SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY .........................................................49 indie ROMANCE ........................................................................................... 52 INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS .......................................................166 nonfiction REVIEWS ...........................................................................................166 INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS ..........................................................55 EDITOR’S NOTE.................................................................................168 REVIEWS ..............................................................................................55 INDIE Q&A: ASHWIN SANGHI ........................................................174 EDITOR’S NOTE................................................................................... 56 FIELD NOTES.....................................................................................186 INTERVIEW: SONIA PURNELL .........................................................66 APPRECIATIONS: JAMES GRADY’S SIX DAYS OF INTERVIEW: GORDON L. DILLOW .................................................. 70 THE CONDOR .................................................................................... 187 INTERVIEW: CASEY CEP ................................................................... 74 5 TRUTHS MORE FEARSOME THAN FICTION ................................78 Jason Reynolds offers children’s 10 unforgettable tales, INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS ......................................................... 87 one for each block on the way home from REVIEWS ............................................................................................. 87 school, celebrating the EDITOR’S NOTE...................................................................................88 bravery it takes to grow INTERVIEW: KAREN STRONG ..........................................................96 up. Read the review on INTERVIEW: MAX BRALLIER .......................................................... 100 p. 123. INTERVIEW: J.R. KRAUSE .............................................................. 104 5 NIGHTTIME ADVENTURE PICTURE BOOKS ............................. 108 HALLOWEEN & THANKSGIVING PICTURE BOOKS..................... 135 | kirkus.com | contents | 1 august 2019 | 3 fiction These titles earned the Kirkus Star: WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS Al-Shawaf, Rayyan Interlink (320 pp.) A NAIL, A ROSE by Madeleine Bourdouxhe; $16.00 paper | Sep. 17, 2019 trans. by Faith Evans .............................................................................8 978-1-62371-977-7 MARLEY by Jon Clinch ........................................................................10 Book critic Al-Shawaf’s first novel, EXQUISITE MARIPOSA by Fiona Alison Duncan .............................12 set in the tumultuous