Every artist experiences a lull, an acute need for fresh inspiration to get their work flowing again. And in Rachel Hawkins’ deliciously unsettling new gothic thriller, The Villa, characters at two points in time—1974 and the present—decide the very same Italian manse is just the place to spark new creative energy.
In the past, rock star Noel Gordon invites up-and-comer Pierce Sheldon; Pierce’s girlfriend, Mari; and Mari’s stepsister, Lara, to join him for a combination of vacation and songwriting session. Sex, drugs and rock ’n‘ roll abound, along with a rising undercurrent of discontent and unease fed by intense jealousy both romantic and artistic.
The louche vacation comes to a horrifying end when Pierce is murdered, thus cementing the villa’s notoriety—and kicking off major careers for Mari and Lara, both of whom began masterworks (a bestselling horror novel and a platinum album, respectively) during their tragic time in Italy.
In the present, the villa hosts frenemies Emily and Chess. They, too, need writerly rejuvenation. Emily, a cozy mystery author in the midst of a contentious divorce, can’t conjure storylines when her own life is a struggle. And famous self-help guru Chess is feeling intense pressure to come up with her next big thing. So she books them a summer stay sure to be rife with limoncello and, they hope, great new ideas. As Mari’s book and Lara’s album pique Emily’s interest, two mysteries emerge: Is there more to the 1974 tragedy than previously revealed? And is Emily’s growing unease simply due to the villa’s haunting history . . . or are her instincts warning of real danger?
Equally compelling dual timelines intertwine as The Villa progresses, showcasing Hawkins’ skill at crafting intriguing characters who take the notion of an unreliable narrator to clever new heights. Sly commentary on self-help and true crime mixes nicely with eerie gothic elements in this inventive and provocative tale that explores the dark side of artistic genius and the corrosive effects of unhealthy relationships. As a bonus, The Villa has its own legendary inspiration: Circa 1816, a vacation for Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley at Switzerland’s Villa Diodati laid the foundation for Mary’s acclaimed Frankenstein. Fans of twisty, creepy, layered thrillers will revel in their suspenseful stay at The Villa.
Fans of twisty, creepy, layered gothic thrillers will revel in their suspenseful stay at The Villa.
If the viewer count for Robert Waldinger’s TED Talk “What Makes a Good Life” is any indication, a lot of us (43 million and counting) are interested in finding out how to live meaningful and happy lives. In The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness, Waldinger and co-author Mark Schulz help readers do just that by sharing with enthusiasm and warm encouragement what they’ve learned as stewards of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, “the longest in-depth longitudinal study of human life ever done.”
The study, which began in 1938 with 724 men and has since grown to include three generations of the original participants’ families, has obtained blood and DNA samples, brain imaging, et al., from its subjects, who have also answered countless questions over the decades. Waldinger is currently the study’s fourth director and Schulz its associate director. In 10 illuminating and wide-ranging chapters, they assert that a truly good life is well within reach if we will acknowledge one straightforward yet profound conclusion: “Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period.”
Chapters like “The Person Beside You” and “Family Matters” explore how romantic and familial connections shape and strengthen us. In “The Good Life at Work,” survey participant Loren exemplifies the benefits of developing office allies: Her stress level lowered and her interactions at home improved thanks to a newly boosted sense of belonging. And “All Friends Have Benefits” argues that we shouldn’t underestimate casual friendships. After all, even if someone isn’t a ride-or-die friend, positive-yet-fleeting interactions still “provide us with jolts of good feeling or energy.” What’s not to like about that?
Those looking for concrete how-tos will appreciate the authors’ W.I.S.E.R. (Watch, Interpret, Select, Engage, Reflect) model for breaking out of confounding relationship patterns. Self-assessment questions such as “Was I willing to acknowledge my role in the situation?” will help readers assess and improve on their roles in interpersonal conflicts.
To do that requires flexibility, of course, and that’s another key lesson of The Good Life: A willingness to consider new perspectives is proven to protect our physical and mental health. So, too, will remembering the authors’ uplifting discovery that “it doesn’t matter how old you are . . . everyone can make positive turns in their life.”
Findings from the Harvard Study of Adult Development reveal that a truly good life is well within reach, and The Good Life will show you how to grasp it.
In the 1970s, a beautiful mansion in Orvieto, Italy, was the site of a brutal killing. Rock megastar Noel Gordon invited musician Pierce Sheldon, plus Pierce’s girlfriend, Mari, and her stepsister, Lara, for a summer of creativity, love and fun. But Pierce ended up dead, earning the villa a sinister reputation and the vacationers a complicated legacy. In the present, longtime yet somewhat estranged friends Emily and Chess go to the very same villa to catch up and hopefully kick off some new projects. While there, the villa’s tragic past piques Emily’s interest. Will she learn something new about the decades-old crime? Or will her sudden obsession distract her from the danger still lurking?
In the summer of 1816, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley participated in an impromptu, multiday creative jam session near Lake Geneva, Switzerland, that ended up inspiring seminal works of gothic horror, including Mary’s groundbreaking Frankenstein. Will you share with us how that weekend in turn inspired you as you wrote The Villa? I think it’s one of those things that is just naturally appealing to writers: a bunch of artists holed up in this gorgeous house, bizarre weather outside (1816 being the famous “Year Without a Summer”), all these completely wild interpersonal things happening among five very young people—Byron was the oldest of all of them, and he was only 28!—and at the end of it, one of the most famous books ever written is created by an 18-year-old girl.
Everything about that is so narratively rich and fun, and there are so many ways you can explore it. That was the seed for me, this idea of how art and life intersect, how great art can get made in the middle of chaos and the way artists inspire and also possibly derail one another.
“I’m always interested in talking about women stepping into their power.”
You pay homage to the participants in that weekend through your characters’ names, e.g., Mary and Mari, Percy and Pierce. Who was the easiest for you to inhabit? The most difficult? The most fun? Mari’s voice always came through the strongest for me, even when the book was just a few stray notes on my laptop. Her sections sometimes felt more like dictating than writing, and that had never happened to me before, so I like to think that maybe I’d read enough about Mary Shelley that she was inhabiting me just a little bit.
For the most fun, that is easily Noel, our Byron stand-in. Byron was such an interesting guy, and when you read his letters, you really get that he was fun and charming and super witty, but the dark side of all that wit was this really stinging cruelty, and I liked finding moments when you could see both of those elements in Noel.
Pierce was probably the trickiest to write just because Percy Shelley himself was a tricky guy! He had all these noble ideals and was a gorgeous writer, but he also wrecked a lot of lives along the way. Finding a way to make Pierce appealing enough that we understand why both Mari and Lara loved him while also showing just how destructive and oblivious he could be was a tough needle to thread.
In addition to balancing dual timelines, you created a book within a book (Mari’s Lilith Rising) and an album, too (Lara’s Aestas). How did you manage all of these elements? I honestly just love challenging myself in new ways, and there was something really fun about conjuring up my own ’70s horror novel and coming up with song lyrics (a first for me!). That said, you realize pretty quickly when you’re writing a book about a famous book and a famous album that you are going to cringe a lot as you write characters going, “This is the best book/song ever!!” when you’re the one writing the excerpts and the lyrics!
Mari’s novel is called Lilith Rising. Why did you choose that title? Like most girls who wore Doc Martens and graduated from high school in 1998, Lilith Fair still looms large in my mind. So when I knew Mari would be writing a novel that would be seen as an important piece of feminist horror, it made total sense to me to involve Lilith. She’s scary (a demon!) but also a feminist icon (the discarded first wife!), and she just felt like the perfect figure to lend her name to Mari’s title.
At one point Mari thinks, “It was hard for two people to be artists when the rugs needed hoovering, and food needed to be purchased, dishes washed. And somehow, those things kept falling on her.” Will you share a bit more about what you wanted to convey with these lines and the ways in which the division of labor in heterosexual partnerships (or lack thereof) plays out in The Villa? This is another one of those things I come back to again and again in my books. I’m always interested in talking about women stepping into their power and the ways society can hold them back from doing that. And one of those ways is this very thing: we’ve come really far, and yet so much domestic stuff still falls on women.
I don’t need anything special in order to write. I don’t need an office that’s just so, or this one kind of pen/word processing program/notebook/tea, whatever, but I do need time and space and—tall order here!—a certain level of calm. Obviously, I’m not going to get those all of the time because Life Happens, but I’ve worked hard to prioritize those things and am lucky to have a family who gets it. But I still hear from women asking things like, “How do I get my partner to take my writing seriously?” or, “How do you balance being a mom and a writer?” So questions of Who Gets To Art, basically, are very much on my mind.
Since The Villa is a book about women and art, it felt natural to explore that idea on a couple of levels. Mari and Emily are both characters who shouldn’t necessarily find themselves in that situation—Mari because she’s living this bohemian lifestyle, Emily because we’re supposed to be past all that in 2023—and yet, they are both hemmed in by the men in their lives in these frustrating but unfortunately familiar ways.
“This book is apparently my way of exploring my personal nightmares.”
What were the challenges of writing about a murder both as it happens and as a true crime story decades later? I’m fascinated by true crime, both as a genre and as a sort of cultural zeitgeist thing, but as the genre has gotten bigger, I’ve also tried to be a little more thoughtful about how much of it—and what kinds of it—I consume. At the end of the day, it’s a little weird that the worst thing that ever happened to someone is my road trip entertainment or the thing I turn on while I fold laundry, you know? So while this is obviously a fictional murder of a fictional character, I did want to show that Emily’s take on the crime might not line up with who these people really were, or what really happened, and that this thing that’s just part of the backstory of her vacation house was a truly devastating event that changed everyone involved.
If presented with a possible murder mystery while staying in a fancy villa, are you the sort of person who would hunt for clues like Emily did? Oh, I would be leaving. Very strict No Murder House policy in all my vacation plans!
Emily and Chess have known each other since childhood but aren’t as close as they once were and are quite often at odds. Mari and Lara have a shared history and a fraught relationship, too. Why do you think those sorts of unhealthy friendships are so common and can be so difficult to navigate? I’ve joked that this book is apparently my way of exploring my personal nightmares because I have so many wonderful and supportive women in my life, so of course I wrote a book where those kinds of relationships are toxic and awful! But the idea of the “frenemy” is so strong, and I think it’s because it exposes the flip side of that saying about how “friends are the family you choose.” They are, but that also makes it more complicated to untangle yourself from a friendship that goes bad—because you did choose that person, and there were a million reasons, big and little, why you did. I feel like society prioritizes family and romantic relationships over friendships, even though friendship is, in a lot of ways, a really complicated mix of those two things—shared history and the magic of finding a stranger who feels like a part of you—so of course when that sours, it can be profoundly hurtful and really tricky to untangle.
Chess has amassed huge wealth and fame in the self-help realm, and Emily is a mix of impressed, envious and skeptical. Are you a bit of a self-help skeptic yourself? There are great self-help books and writers out there who genuinely help people, and I’ve been helped myself by some of them. So not a full skeptic, no! But in the past few years, the sort of Girlbossification of mental health has definitely raised my eyebrows a bit, and Chess is a reflection of that. For Chess, it’s not so much about helping people—even though she does buy into her own hype at times—but presenting this kind of aspirational lifestyle in which mental health is just another thing on the checklist next to “BMW” and “Nancy Meyers Movie Kitchen.” That kind of career path requires a certain kind of ruthlessness but also a lot of intelligence and an innate understanding of people. Emily sees all of that in Chess, but she’s also the kind of woman who’s a part of Chess’s ideal audience, which is why her feelings about Chess’ whole thing are a really complicated mix.
In both storylines in The Villa, there are famous and wealthy characters who are often casually cruel to friends who have less money and security. What is it about that sort of relationship that appeals to you as a writer? The haves vs. the have-nots is such a powerful trope, and I think it’s particularly interesting to explore given how often we’re told that we live in a classless society despite all evidence to the contrary. So it’s one of those things that lets you really get in the weeds when it comes to character work, and it helps you build sympathy for your have-not characters. (Sidenote: It’s always so funny to me how even the people who are definitely the haves never really see themselves that way!) It’s also part of a rich tradition of storytelling; issues of money and class are always right at home in a gothic novel!
Is the gothic tone one you always intended to explore? Are there gothic authors or books you return to again and again? I have always been a huge fan of all things gothic and was very into Anne Rice as a teenager. I have a collection of old Victoria Holt novels that I treasure, and I also have a lot of newer books—Mexican Gothic, The Hacienda, The Death of Jane Lawrence—so I am not surprised to finally have a big ol’ creepy house book under my belt. The gothic was definitely an element of my earlier thrillers, but this is the one where I leaned in the hardest, and it was just the most fun. So fun that my next thriller is equally, if not more, gothic. So yes, definitely a tone I love exploring!
“Houses remember” is an important line in your book, written and pondered by various characters, evoking a range of emotions and more than a few shudders. What does that phrase mean to you? To be completely honest, at first I just thought it was a really cool—and yes, spooky—way to open a book! But the more I wrote, the more that line kept popping up until it was basically a theme. It means various things to the characters, but for me, it’s about the way a place can sometimes seem to hold not just the memories but the energy of the people who once stayed there.
What do you most hope readers take away from The Villa? I have a huge amount of fun writing my books (yes, even when they get pretty dark!), and that’s always the main thing I want for my readers, too. I want The Villa to make a long flight go by quickly, or distract them in waiting rooms, or make an afternoon on the couch with a cup of tea just that much more enjoyable. I love playing around with big ideas and themes and all the things I got an English degree to explore, but at the end of the day, I’m in this to entertain, and I hope The Villa does that!
Photo of Rachel Hawkins by John Hawkins.
The author turned to one of the most iconic gatherings in literary history to create The Villa.
Last year, Rachel Riley was the most popular girl at East Middle School in Madison, Wisconsin. This year, she’s persona non grata with the entire eighth grade class—except for Anna Hunt.
Anna, the new kid in town, is an aspiring journalist who loves listening to podcasts, reading and emailing her grandmother, Babcia, who lives in Poland. Anna dreams of being accepted to the summer podcasting camp at Northwestern University, but she needs to create an outstanding podcasting sample for her application. In the meantime, she’s also trying her best to make friends at her new school.
When Anna’s Social Issues teacher assigns a semester-long “un-essay” project about any social question of personal interest, Anna decides that investigating Rachel’s precipitous fall from grace is the perfect way to achieve all her goals. She’ll interview Rachel and their classmates about what happened and get to know people along the way. Sure, she might ruffle some feathers, but that’s part of being a journalist.
Text messages, passed notes, emails, flyers and interview transcripts enable readers to join Anna as she gains insight into East Middle School, deftly illustrating how even casual conversations can layer upon one another and grow into a rising tide of peer pressure. When Anna realizes that Rachel’s ostracization is tied to a sexual harassment “game” that the boys have been playing at the girls’ expense, she’s understandably uncertain about what to do next. Through Rachel’s experiences, Anna has seen how dangerous it can be to reveal secrets, to make a fuss and stand out from the crowd. But could it be worth doing anyway, if it leads to real change?
Claire Swinarski has created a strikingly realistic depiction of what it’s like to navigate the minefields of middle school while trying to figure out what you stand for—and what you’re willing to stand up for. What Happened to Rachel Riley? is both timely and, unfortunately, timeless in its depiction of systemic sexual harassment and and frustratingly inappropriate reactions from authority figures and peers. This compelling novel urges readers to consider what they might do in similar situations and reminds them that “sometimes, fairness has to be demanded instead of waited for.”
In this strikingly realistic and partially epistolary novel, Anna must navigate the minefield of middle school while trying to figure out what she stands for—and what she’s willing to stand up for.
What is it about butts, exactly, that has made them such a source of fascination throughout history? In her debut book, Butts: A Backstory, reporter Heather Radke seeks to answer that question with wit, empathy and verve. The author spoke with BookPage about what she learned when she looked at butts head-on.
Congratulations on your first book! Did you always want to be an author? What’s been the most exciting aspect so far? Yes! I have wanted to be a writer since I was a little girl wearing bifocals, thumbing through the pages of Anne of Green Gables at Schuler Bookstore in Okemos, Michigan. It is incredibly difficult to write a book, and a true honor and thrill to have it published. For me, one of the most exciting parts was doing oral histories with different women about their bodies for the initial background research. I spoke with people who had very different bodies from mine and came from very different backgrounds, and it was always fascinating to hear how people feel about their bodies and what helped shape those feelings.
What made you decide that butts merited more than an interview or essay, but instead an entire book? Why were you moved to write about butts now? I started this book as an essay about the connection between the bustle and the life of Sarah Baartman—a Khoe woman from rural South Africa who was taken to London in 1810 and put on exhibit so people could pay to view her butt—but I quickly realized that the questions I was asking had answers that were much larger than a single essay could contain. In order to understand the symbolic significance of womens’ butts, I would need to explore many historical moments, as well as the science of the butt and the recent explosion of interest in mainstream pop culture. It was this recent interest in the butt that made me think it might be a potent topic to write about now. One of the questions I had was about why and how mainstream beauty standards change, and the butt is such a powerful example of what that looks like.
It’s clear that you put a great deal of time, effort and care into learning about a dizzying variety of people, places, eras, fashions, cultures and more for Butts. Will you share a bit about what it was like to manage such a massive amount of information? It was a lot of information! It felt like I was trying (and failing) to become an expert on everything, from Jane Fonda’s career to the gender politics of drag to the history of South Africa in the 18th century. I tried to read as widely and deeply as I could on each subject, talk to scholars in the various fields I was covering, and report on the people whose lives were touched by the topics in each chapter. In a lot of ways, it felt like what I used to do when I curated exhibits at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, and I used some of the organizational and research tools I learned when I did that work. But there is always a bit of a feeling of drinking from a firehose when taking on such an enormous topic. I’ll never be able to learn as much as I want!
Was there anything you had to leave out of Butts that you wish you could’ve included? The butt is a HUGE topic, because it’s as old as the human species and as varied. I wish I’d been able to research and include more about other parts of the world besides the United States and Europe, but I decided that it made sense to narrow the scope because of my own personal experience and the enormous influence the U.S. has had on beauty standards worldwide. I also did some research on art history, pornography and the midcentury pinup girl, each of which could have been its own chapter!
“The work is to try and interrogate our assumptions about bodies and ask where they came from, if they are true and why we cling to them.”
In your Introduction to Butts, you reflect on your childhood view that your mother’s butt was “a body part like any other, something to love because I loved the human it was part of. It was not a problem or a blessing. It was only a fact.” Of course, as your book amply illustrates, “butts are not so simple.” Do you think we will ever be able to back off of butts enough to view them as fact, to see them as a body part rather than a symbol? Honestly, no. We use bodies and body parts as symbols constantly—whether breasts, skin, hair or butts—and that feels very unlikely to change. I think the real problem isn’t actually using bodies symbolically but doing so unconsciously, or confusing the symbolism for reality. The work is to try and interrogate our assumptions about bodies and ask where they came from, if they are true and why we cling to them. Maybe then we can find new kinds of symbolism, or new ways to make meaning that aren’t so hurtful to so many people.
Considering race is vitally important when examining attitudes toward butts and the women they belong to. From Sarah Baartman and the racist so-called “scientific inquiry” that was used to exploit her, to the more modern-day obsession with Jennifer Lopez’s posterior—there is a seemingly endless mix of fascination, envy, desire and anger projected onto the butts of women of color. When you think about that aspect of your work in Butts, what has stayed with you the most? As a white woman, I was very interested in when and why white women become interested in the butts of women of color. Of course, there isn’t a single answer to that question, but something that twerk instructor Kelechi Okafor said really stuck with me. She talked about how many white women she encountered as a dance instructor were uncomfortable with their own sexuality and turned to twerk as a way to express themselves sexually. Obsession with butts is almost always adjacent to angst about sex and race. The more we can talk about that openly, the more likely it is that fewer people will be objectified and harmed by that obsession.
“Because they are funny, and easy not to take seriously, there is a lot of subtext that goes unexamined in butt-related cultural products.”
“Baby Got Back” is a song that everyone knows, and your deep dive into its origins offers lots of interesting context in terms of how the song and its creator, Sir Mix-A-Lot, were received in 1992—and the ways in which its lyrics and video still affect our perceptions of butts today. But while the song and video are in many ways a celebration, you also note that one professor called it “empowered misogyny.” Can you share a bit more about that dichotomy? I think that “Baby Got Back” is a very complicated text, largely because it is so popular. I believe that Sir Mix-A-Lot meant for it to be a celebration of a beauty standard that, at the time, was not mainstream. But when I watch it now, my conversation with Kyra Gaunt, the scholar who called the song “empowered misogyny,” is the one I think about the most. She talked about how it was part of a larger trend in hip-hop of objectifying women, but that because it’s about butts and therefore seems like a joke, it’s easier to give it a pass. It is one of the things that is truly fascinating about butts: Because they are funny, and easy not to take seriously, there is a lot of subtext that goes unexamined in butt-related cultural products.
You note that when you were around 10 or 11, suddenly exercise was “no longer a game. It was a necessity.” Aerobics were a rite of passage for women in the 1980s, especially “Buns of Steel” and Jane Fonda videos. Is there any form of exercise today that occupies the same sort of butt-obsessed space in our culture? There were lots of classes in the mid-2010s that promised to help create butts that looked like Kim Karashian or Beyonce. Those classes, which likely used very similar exercises as “Buns of Steel,” promised to create a big butt, whereas “Buns of Steel” was much more invested in a small, tight butt. It’s in these promises that you can really see the ways that trends around body shape ebb and flow.
“The things that we don’t take seriously, the things we laugh about or feel are too small to notice, are often things that hold tremendous meaning.”
What were you most hoping to convey or accomplish with Butts? What’s been the most surprising reaction to the book so far? I’ve definitely gotten the sense that some people are surprised that a book like this exists. When I posted the cover on social media, there were a few retweets where people said, essentially, “Is this some kind of joke?” But in a way, I suppose that is part of the bigger point I’m trying to make with this book: The things that we don’t take seriously, the things we laugh about or feel are too small to notice, are often things that hold tremendous meaning. Butts contain multitudes, and it can be both meaningful and fun to discover just what those multitudes are.
What’s next for you? Great question! I just had a baby, so my hope is that a little more sleep lies in my immediate future. Beyond that, I’m working on a couple of projects that take up some of the themes of Butts—gender, identity, the importance of the small—and explore them from very different angles.
In her fascinating and frank debut, Butts: A Backstory, journalist Heather Radke ponders why this body part is so polarizing, the collective cultural obsession so enduring.
As the author notes in her introduction, “Butts are a bellwether. The feelings we have about butts are almost always indicative of other feelings—feelings about race, gender, and sex.” Radke explores the societal forces that underlie such feelings as she guides readers on an impressively well-researched tour of butts throughout history, beginning with a functional analysis (hominids and horses take center stage) and ultimately alighting in the present (twerking, social media and celebrity butts).
In between, Radke considers the persistent, pernicious attitude toward women’s bodies as things to critique. She shares the story of Sarah Baartman, a South African woman of the Khoe tribe who was effectively enslaved and exhibited in England and France in the early 1800s under the guise of scientific inquiry. From there, Radke segues into eugenics and its emphasis on big butts as supposed markers of sexual deviance.
These so-called scientific endeavors have had a ripple effect, Radke explains, influencing media and pop culture, creeping into beauty standards and body image. She offers examples of butt-obsessed media with positive posterior impacts, too; a deep dive into the 1992 hip-hop sensation “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-A-Lot is entertaining and edifying, and Beyoncé’s 2001 hit “Bootylicious” gets a shoutout as well.
Radke also touches on fitness sensations (“Buns of Steel”) and fashion trends (Victorian bustles), as well as her complicated feelings about her own “generous” butt. While she, like so many others, has felt shame about her body shape, Radke also believes that “a close examination of the parts of ourselves that can feel unbearable . . . can be transformative.” Certainly, Butts can usher readers onto this more positive path, thanks to its top-notch reportage, assured and respectful voice and invitation to butt-centric contemplation.
In Butts: A Backstory, journalist Heather Radke ponders why this body part is so polarizing, the collective cultural obsession so enduring.
In this trio of suspense novels, a seasoned spy, a clever reward-seeker and a thief extraordinaire take on complicated, dangerous assignments as they race against time and attempt to elude their equally determined enemies.
JUDAS 62
At just under 500 pages, Charles Cumming’s JUDAS 62 is a commitment, but those who love immersive espionage thrillers will consider it time well spent.
Fans were first introduced to Lachlan Kite in the 2022 series-opener BOX 88, named for the spy agency to which Kite has been loyal since his college days. As the second book begins, Kite is chagrined to hear that former Russian general Saul Kaszeta, a BOX 88 resource for many years, has been killed at his home in Connecticut. To make matters worse, Kite learns of the existence of the JUDAS list, a log of Russia’s enemies who are targets for assassination. Kaszeta was on that list, and thanks to a mission he completed in 1993, so is Kite. Also on the chopping block? Yuri Aranov, the bioweapons scientist Kite exfiltrated all those years ago.
Emotionally vivid flashbacks to that mission offer insight into a pivotal time in Kite’s life, when he was transitioning from a newbie uncomfortable with lying to his friends into an accomplished, silver-tongued agent on the rise. It’s a treat to be in on Kite’s elaborate planning, social machinations and on-the-fly pivots as roadblocks literal and figurative pop up in his path, including a violent Russian intelligence agent named Mikhail Gromik.
In the present day, there’s plenty of nail-biting action, too: Kite’s got to keep himself and Aranov from being crossed off the JUDAS list and, to truly ensure their safety, take Gromik off the map. Kite and his team jet off to Dubai, “a playground for spying,” to bring those goals to fruition, and Cumming puts his characters in a variety of creatively precarious situations, layering in paranoia and suspense galore. He also underscores the inner conflict that bedevils his spies both novice and expert, what a young Kite called being “suspended between the two worlds in which he lived.” JUDAS 62 offers an engrossing, highly detailed excursion into spy life that crackles with tension, life-or-death problem-solving and plenty of international intrigue.
Hunting Time
As his millions of fans know, Jeffery Deaver likes a twist, especially in his Colter Shaw series. The rugged reward-seeker (he finds people who have gone missing and collects the reward money) relies on two rules emphasized by his uber-survivalist late father: “never be without a means of escape, and never be without access to a weapon.”
In his fourth adventure, Hunting Time, Shaw puts those rules to the test on a new sort of project, foiling the theft of a nuclear device called the Pocket Sun. The client is Marty Harmon, the founder of Midwestern startup Harmon Energy Products. Shaw likes the cut of Harmon’s jib, so he agrees when the CEO implores him to do yet another job just days later. The brilliant Allison Parker, Harmon’s best engineer and inventor of the Pocket Sun, and her teenage daughter, Hannah, have gone on the run because Allison’s abusive ex-husband, former police detective Jon Merritt, was released early from prison. Harmon wants Allison and Hannah found, protected and returned, but Allison refuses to resurface until Jon is back behind bars.
Deaver deftly alternates perspectives throughout Shaw’s suspenseful three-day chase over rough terrain, immersing the reader in Jon’s growing rage, Allison’s efforts to strategize an escape while keeping the argumentative Hannah calm, and the demented determination of two hit men who are, alas, also chasing Allison. As time ticks by and the various players converge, Deaver keeps the anxiety high with short chapters and multiple twists that cast the characters’ motivations in surprising new lights. The vagaries of city politics and complicated family dynamics add depth and context to this timely and tension-filled thriller.
Three-Edged Sword
Incorrigible master thief Riley Wolfe is back for a third escapade in Three-Edged Sword by Jeff Lindsay, author of the Dexter series (and creator of the hit TV adaption).
The story picks up right after 2020’s Fool Me Twice, and Riley is doing the last thing readers would expect: sitting still. Or at least trying to, as he waits for Monique—master art forger, occasional heist partner, the woman for whom he has unresolved romantic feelings—to emerge from a coma. Riley’s mother has been in a coma for some time, and with the only two people he cares about ill and inaccessible, he’s suffering the kind of antsiness that makes him “really want to . . . light [his] hair on fire and run screaming into the night.”
He doesn’t do that, but he does take risks that land him in the clutches of Chase Prescott, a rogue CIA agent who decides to force Riley into doing a job for him. He’s to sneak onto a remote island in Lithuania owned by former Soviet intelligence agent Ivo Balodis, who lives in an underground bunker connected to a decommissioned missile silo. Once there, he must steal a flash drive from the (heavily guarded and booby-trapped) silo; as payment, he can swipe a rare Russian icon from Balodis’ prized collection.
Riley is infuriated to learn that Prescott has kidnapped his mother and Monique to ensure compliance. Can he rescue them from Prescott’s goons while coming up with a way to breach Balodis’ missile silo without coming to great harm, or even death? Readers will be transfixed by Riley’s every move as he engages in astonishing transformations and clever ruses in pursuit of his seemingly impossible goals in this audacious and action-packed thriller.
A seasoned spy, a clever reward-seeker and a thief extraordinaire race against time and attempt to elude their equally determined enemies.
It’s four days before Christmas, and Atlanta is in the middle of an unprecedented blizzard. Highway traffic has slowed to a halt; flights are grounded; malls are closing. The abundant chaos as a surprise snowstorm hits a wholly unprepared Southern city serves as the perfect setting for a race against time in the delightful, suspenseful Whiteout. Can a couple reunite and reconcile before it’s too late?
Stevie and Sola’s middle school friendship transformed into high school love. Together, they’ve plotted out their future: Howard University, marriage, kids, in that order. But after a truly disastrous weekend, that future is in serious jeopardy. First, Sola was deeply hurt by the hypothesis of Stevie’s science experiment, which posited that love is nothing more than “a biological response built into human brains to ensure the survival of the population.” Then, in a spectacular explosion of arrogance and humiliation, Stevie ruined their meticulously planned coming-out dinner with Sola’s extended family. And so Sola has issued Stevie an ultimatum: provide a satisfactory explanation and apology by midnight, or they’re over—for good.
Heartsick Stevie leaps into action, asking several friends to join her elaborate plan to win back Sola. When the blizzard arrives, she cancels those requests, but in an encouraging display of loyalty, the other teens pitch in nonetheless. It’s not easy; they get stuck in locations all around their snow-besieged city while also unraveling their own entanglements. As the clock ticks down to midnight, readers will root for multiple couples to take their own leaps of faith as they assist Stevie with hers.
This unabashedly romantic effort by acclaimed and bestselling YA authors Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk and Nicola Yoon will captivate readers who adored the group’s first novel, 2021’s Blackout. While both books celebrate Black and queer love, the writers took a different approach for Whiteout, blending their contributions rather than crafting alternating chapters. (For extra fun, be sure to check out their authors’ note, which offers tantalizing hints about who wrote which characters.) The result is a charming and captivating second-chance romance that pays homage to friendship, honesty and the power of swoonworthy grand gestures.
A surprise snowstorm in a wholly unprepared city serves as the perfect setting for a romantic race against time in the delightful, suspenseful Whiteout.
Susan Dennard kicks off a darkly magical, action-packed new series with The Luminaries, which introduces a mysterious world filled with monsters. It’s the story of a teen girl named Winnie Wednesday and her quest to rejoin the secret organization of monster hunters who keep her town—and the world—safe. Dennard chatted with BookPage about her novel’s unusual origin story, the unexpected ways she still uses her marine biology degree and how she continues to grow as a writer after eight books and 10 years as a published author.
Can you introduce us to Winnie and what’s going on in her life when we meet her? The book opens on Winnie’s 16th birthday in a town called Hemlock Falls, where nightmares rise in a nearby forest each night. Seven clans within the secret Luminaries society are charged with fighting those nightmares and protecting the world at large. There’s one clan for each night of the week, and Winnie is a Wednesday.
Four years ago, Winnie’s father was revealed to be a Diana—aka a witch, the sworn enemy of the Luminaries. Her dad ran off, but Winnie, her brother and her mom remained behind, still loyal to the cause. They were given a 10-year sentence to exist as outcasts within Hemlock Falls as punishment for not seeing what their dad really was.
Ever since that moment four years ago, Winnie has been secretly training to participate in the deadly Hunter trials. She is convinced if she can pass and become a Wednesday nightmare hunter, her family will be welcomed back into the Luminaries society.
The Luminaries has a pretty unique origin story. For readers who have no idea what I’m talking about, could you give us a quick rundown? The Luminaries was an idea I first tried to sell in 2013 without any success, so my agent and I shelved it. Fast-forward six years to 2019: I was in a dark place after a miscarriage and didn’t like being alone with my thoughts, so while sitting at LaGuardia waiting for a flight, I thought, “Let’s do something fun on Twitter.”
I hastily typed off a tweet that began the story of The Luminaries, and at the end was a poll in which readers could choose what to do next. Little did I know that story would last six months, with thousands of people voting every single day on what Winnie Wednesday would do!
“You know, emotions are messy. The heart wants what it wants, even when the brain is like, ‘That is a very bad plan.’”
How did the story change in its transformation from interactive Twitter thread to novel? What was important to you to preserve in that transformation and why? It changed a ton, actually. For two reasons: First, I am not someone who wants to rewrite a story she’s already written—the fun is in the discovery. Second, if I had tried to replicate our online tale, it would never have lived up! Ninety-five percent of the fun came from the communal elements, like the teams that cropped up (like #TeamThirst, who always voted toward romance, or #TeamPetty, who always voted for the worst option), the chitchat between readers, the roping-in of friends so they would vote too . . . I couldn’t match that!
So I ended up taking the world and characters and crafting a wholly new tale. But of course, I made sure to include the most iconic moments and some Easter eggs for the original LumiNerds.
Winnie’s family’s motto is “The cause above all else. Loyalty through and through.” What did you enjoy about creating her character? It’s fun to write a character who very rarely questions the why of something and simply does because they believe so deeply in a cause. It makes knowing what Winnie will do in a scene easy: She will always work toward a singular goal. But then it’s especially fun to introduce cracks into that character’s loyalty, to have them start noticing and questioning and wondering if maybe they’ve got it all wrong.
You write so empathetically about Winnie’s emotions: She feels hurt by her family’s ostracism, but she also yearns to be included. She’s justifiably angry but uncertain about when and how to express it. What drew you to a protagonist who occupies this emotional landscape? You know, emotions are messy. The heart wants what it wants, even when the brain is like, “That is a very bad plan.” And I think every person out there has been caught in a conflict like that. Then you throw some external pressure onto the situation—particularly from relationships that matter to you—and there’s really no way to avoid a lot of feelings. I find that it’s in those messy emotional moments that we make the most difficult decisions and come out stronger for them.
There’s a scene in which Winnie collects corpses; later, she attends a fancy event. How do you get yourself in the right headspace to write such contrasting scenes—one so dark and gory, the other so glittery and celebratory? Ha! I had no trouble moving from one end of the spectrum to the other. It’s the way the whole Luminaries world operates, and I think it’s how a lot of humans operate. There are so many truly tough jobs out there, but then we go home to our families and celebrate birthdays, and our brains toggle between the two lives pretty fluidly.
“Teens have all the smarts and ingenuity of adults but without the baggage or prejudices. They have a clarity of thought that lets them see ways forward that we adults just can’t seem to find.”
Of course, it’s not always easy—for the world at large or for Winnie—and we’ll really see that come into play in the sequel.
Scientific curiosity plays a big role in The Luminaries. How did your own background in marine biology influence this aspect of the novel? Speaking of toggling between gore and fun, I have had the experience of cutting apart sharks on Arctic ice, then tucking into a cozy tent and playing cards all night. You can’t fully enjoy the latter without the first.
I love studying the creatures of the world and how evolution leads to such incredible adaptations. It’s what got me into marine ecology—so many amazing adaptations in our oceans! It was really fun to give Winnie the same fascination I have and to use my understanding of evolution and ecosystems to create the forest’s various nightmares.
Speaking of that forest, you write about it so vividly—the look and feel of the trees, the density of the mist, the sounds and smells of the landscape. Forests often hold a kind of archetypal power in fantasy stories. How did you go about crafting this particular forest? Was it influenced by any real forests you’ve encountered? I was definitely influenced by nights out camping. If you’ve ever been in a dense forest when there is no moon or other light, then you know it is a feeling. You really cannot see, no matter how much your eyes adjust. And then the sounds! There are so many sounds, and each one easily takes on a sinister meaning (at least if you’re like me and have an overactive imagination). It wasn’t hard at all for me to tap into that feeling and turn it into an entire world.
There’s a moment when Winnie is talking about her family, and she says, “We deserve to dream again.” That’s such a heavy weight for anyone to bear. What would you say to a teenager who is feeling a pressure like that? One of the main reasons I write YA is because I think teens have all the smarts and ingenuity of adults but without the baggage or prejudices. They have a clarity of thought that lets them see ways forward that we adults just can’t seem to find—or that we adults are convinced will never work.
I don’t want anyone to feel pressured to dream, but I do think hoping and finding solutions is something teens are uniquely adept at. So while Winnie’s mom would never want her daughter to be doing what she’s doing (secretly entering these deadly Hunter trials), Winnie also has that clarity of vision her mom lacks. She sees how this could save her family, and she’s willing to take that risk.
This year marks a decade since you published your first book, 2012’s Something Strange and Deadly. What are some ways you’ve changed as a writer? What makes you feel excited about the next decade of writing? I’d like to think I’m a much better writer now than I was a decade ago—both on a prose level and on a more macro story level. And I certainly have a much more innate ability to write now than when I first began. It’s that difference between “unconscious competence” and “conscious competence.”
Of course, I’m also still learning—which is so exciting to consider. I can still get better. I love to study craft, and I hope my books only get stronger with each new title.
There comes a time in every hit man or woman’s life to hang up the garrotte and stow away the guns. The assassin protagonists of these books are understandably world- and work-weary, but old habits die hard when you’re a killer for hire.
It’s impossible not to like Billie, Mary Alice, Natalie and Helen, even if Deanna Raybourn’s Killers of a Certain Age makes it abundantly clear that the quartet could easily kill someone and get away with it if they so desired. After all, they’ve done just that many, many times during their 40-year careers as elite assassins for an international organization called the Museum.
The women are smart and funny, each with a specialty (poison, bombs, weapons) and all with extensive training in planning and carrying out assassinations. As Billie quips, “Our job is to eliminate people who need killing.” So it’s quite a shock when, before they’ve even had a chance to enjoy the all-expenses-paid retirement cruise arranged by the Museum, the women realize someone has decided that they need killing—someone who just might be on the board of their former employer. The women take a moment to indulge their anger like any longtime employee would (“We’ve given forty years to those assholes and this is how they repay us.”) and then surge into action, joining forces to figure out who’s after them and why.
Raybourn, an Edgar finalist and bestselling author of the Veronica Speedwell historical mystery series, has created a group of protagonists who are as reliably charming as they are impressively badass. It’s fascinating to follow along as they map out routes, create disguises, work their connections and improvise weapons. They handle it all with practiced aplomb, even if they occasionally groan with aggravation after battles to the death leave them feeling achier than they used to. But the four “avenging goddesses” are also able to use sexism and ageism to their strategic advantage, given that the combo renders them virtually invisible.
Ingenuity and instinct combine with deadly determination in this memorable thriller that celebrates friendship, ponders the meaning of loyalty, and offers plenty of action-packed entertainment among all the, well, killing.
In contrast to the ladies’ collaborative approach, there can only be one top-notch killer in the world of Seventeen. Screenwriter John Brownlow’s debut novel gives that number one spot to his brashly confident narrator, a man known only as Seventeen.
To achieve assassin supremacy, you must kill your predecessor—but Sixteen suddenly disappeared eight years ago. He’s the first assassin in 100 years to have done so, making Seventeen the only one who hasn’t truly earned his spot, according to his handler (who, of course, goes by “Handler”). Seventeen’s a consummate professional nonetheless, with a practical approach to his work: “I’m not saying what I do is a public service exactly, but actions have consequences.”
Now, though, it seems Seventeen himself may have begun to suffer the consequences of his chosen career path. After a multitarget assignment gets a bit messy, and he completes two subsequent jobs in Berlin without his usual finesse, he worries he might be losing his touch, and it seems like Handler might agree. When he informs Seventeen his next job is to find Sixteen and take him out, Seventeen’s hunch intensifies. Can he find and finish Sixteen before Handler sends someone else to finish him, too?
Brownlow’s snappy prose and brief chapters will have readers eagerly flipping the pages. Sixteen may be off the grid, but he’s not going to be off his game: He’s too smart to let his guard down, and he’s got 20 years of experience on Seventeen. As the ultimate showdown nears, compelling secondary characters add to the darkly humorous fun, intense action scenes amp up the suspense, and Seventeen reflects on the tragic childhood events that set him on his ruthless career path. That exploration of the far-ranging effects of trauma, as well as forays into geopolitics and governmental corruption, bolster the cleverly constructed, propulsive thrill ride that is Seventeen.
Can an assassin ever truly retire? The characters in these two thrillers are about to find out.
Katherine St. John is a pro at crafting escapist thrillers: Her often gorgeous protagonists find themselves in remote settings, surrounded by people they’re not sure they can trust. It all makes for loads of nail-biting suspense as said protagonists realize they’d better figure out how to, well, escape before something truly terrible happens.
Fans of her previous books, The Lion’s Den and The Siren, will devour St. John’s latest, The Vicious Circle, which conjures up that same life-or-death urgency amid opulence. This time, the setting is a wellness center named Xanadu, deep in the Mexican jungle. The luxurious compound offers much fodder for suspicion. (The bedrooms have no doors? What’s with all the chanting?) It also serves as the locus for St. John’s exploration of shared beliefs-turned-toxic groupthink and the fuzzy line between enigmatic mysticism and subtle manipulation.
Former model Sveta Bentzen is shocked to learn that her estranged uncle, the famous self-help guru and Xanadu founder Paul Sayres, left his entire estate to her instead of his wife, Kali. All her life, Sveta has felt that she’s not enough, either for her loving but distant mother or her wealthy fiancé’s influential and scornful family. When she learns of her uncle’s death, she grieves the relationship they didn’t have and is determined to make the long, treacherous journey to Xanadu for the memorial service Kali will host there. Sveta’s confidence falters when lawyer (and handsome former flame) Lucas joins the trip, but she perseveres, hoping to reach an understanding with Kali while Lucas handles the finances. The Xanadu residents welcome them, but Sveta suspects that hostility may lurk beneath Kali’s serenity—and that the circumstances of her uncle’s death may have been misrepresented, too.
Fans of “The White Lotus’ and Nine Perfect Strangers will relish Sveta’s race to find a way to escape Xanadu before it’s too late. Her hard-won journey to realizing her self-worth is as compelling as it is deliciously ironic: Who knew all you had to do to win confidence, love and inner peace is escape a creepy wellness center?
Fans of “The White Lotus” and Nine Perfect Strangers will relish Katherine St. John’s latest escapist thriller.
Just as immersion in nature inspires a mix of profound awe and renewed curiosity about this Earth we call home, so, too, does filmmaker and novelist Priyanka Kumar’s mesmerizing essay collection, Conversations With Birds—rendered in finely wrought prose, steeped in memory and thrumming with endless curiosity.
Kumar reflects on her childhood in northern India, formative years during which she enjoyed lush nature every day. As a young adult studying film at the University of California, Santa Cruz, she realized that she had become alienated from the natural realm that once brought her such joy. An impromptu bird walk and fortuitous encounter with a long-billed curlew reshaped the way Kumar has experienced the world ever since: “My hunger to know more about the bird was like a bridge that would one day lead me back to nature’s elusive womb.”
In the years since, Kumar has embarked on journeys far and near to commune with birds (cranes, owls, tanagers, eagles) and other creatures that inhabit the American Southwest. She chronicles her encounters thoughtfully and with passion, dotting her work with references to Orpheus, Henry David Thoreau, Ravi Shankar and more.
But travel isn’t necessary for engaging with nature; just looking up at a tree that you walk by daily could reveal new wonders. Kumar and her family have only to sit by the large round window that looks out on their Santa Fe backyard, where they might observe a passing bobcat or the beheaded remains of flowers that were eaten by deer.
However, birds remain Kumar’s truest loves. “How is it that we can love birds . . . and not be attentive to how bird habitats all around us are being fragmented or overgrazed or paved over with concrete?” she writes. It’s a question that circles through Conversations With Birds from beginning to end as Kumar celebrates the creatures that live among us and urges us to consider our role in protecting our collective future. After all, she knows from experience that “the seeds of transformation lie dormant in all of our hearts. Sometimes it just takes the right bird to awaken us.”
The essays in Conversations With Birds are rendered in finely wrought prose, steeped in memory and thrumming with endless curiosity about nature.
When the sun sets in the forests of Hemlock Falls, a heavy mist rises, bringing with it a host of horrifying creatures. From banshees to were-beasts, these living nightmares exist to wreak terror and destruction and must be killed or contained within the boundaries of the forest. If they were to escape, they would destroy the world.
Winnie Wednesday desperately wants to become a Hunter for the Luminaries, the international order whose seven clans keep humanity safe. Each clan is named for a day of the week, and each has its own motto. The Wednesday clan’s motto is “loyalty through and through,” which Winnie’s family happily embodied until her dad was revealed to be a traitor and disappeared from their lives. Winnie and her family have been shunned and scorned by the other Luminaries in the four years since.
But as her 16th birthday approaches, Winnie is ready to restore her family to its rightful place by passing the grueling Hunter trials. It won’t be easy, since she hasn’t spent the past four years training with the other Wednesdays. She reluctantly realizes that there is one person she could ask for help: her ex-best friend, Jay Friday, who is now one of the best—and most handsome—Hunters in Hemlock Falls.
In The Luminaries, bestselling author Susan Dennard kicks off a darkly magical, action-packed new series and introduces a mysterious world filled with monsters. Readers will urge Winnie on as she gains confidence, strength and lots of bruises while training with the capable yet secretive Jay. Dennard builds tension as what seemed impossible comes tantalizingly within Winnie’s reach. But Winnie’s doubts grow, too. Does she really want to become part of a group that shunned her and her family?
Plenty of gasp-inducing thrills, monstrous gore and empathetic soul-searching—plus a little tentative flirting—bring The Luminaries to a satisfying conclusion. Dennard resolves important questions and tees up some well-placed cliffhangers for the next installment. In the meantime, readers should check out the author’s acknowledgments, in which she thanks the fans who helped get the book started via a wonderful 2019 choose-your-own-story Twitter thread that still lives online. LumiNerds, arise!
