If wild queer comedy can somehow be used to thwart evil and bring about world peace, this is the book that will save us.
A struggling young actor is recruited to help an all-gay special ops team save the world.
At 25, Andrew Birnbaum is nice-looking and talented at both acting and singing. He loves comedy and improv and can do a one-man version of Wicked, playing everybody, in under 10 minutes, though only close friends have seen it. He’s barely paying the rent on his basement apartment in the far reaches of the East Village selling scented candles at a store called Smells of the Season when his best friend, Brock, invites him to a meeting of a dinner club called the Tuxedo Society. There he meets a delightful and diverse group of gentlemen and ladies whose professions involve everything from luxury real estate to selling replacement china on the internet; there’s a Navy SEAL, an OnlyFans star, and a former Olympic swimmer. While visiting the men’s room, he witnesses a wild encounter involving several of the tuxedoed diners that leaves two dead, no-goodniks who were part of a group intending to assassinate the first lady. Turns out, Andrew is being recruited to join a group of LGBTQ+ superheroes for his ability at improv—and the next thing he knows, he’s at the White House impersonating a cater waiter, helping to foil the next attempt on the life of Reata Pershing, an absolute goddess of a Black first lady whose fabulousness and wardrobe selections were certainly inspired by Michelle Obama. Andrew proves to be a lot better at this work than he would have thought, and his action-packed escapades with the Tuxedo Society take him to Paris, the Vatican, and beyond. Rudnick jams more comic energy into a single sentence than seems physically possible, his agile metaphors flying like gymnasts across the page: “My erection wasn’t my fault, because he was deliberately done up as British librarian/Nobel finalist clickbait, like Eddie Redmayne in any British biopic where he crosses an Oxford quad in October, hunched from calculating a theorem or composing a sonnet.” His descriptions of the attire at the papal residence alone are worth the price of admission.
If wild queer comedy can somehow be used to thwart evil and bring about world peace, this is the book that will save us.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781668212615
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.
A phone call from her past disrupts the tenuously reconstructed life of a concert pianist turned farmer’s wife.
We know from the beginning that Livia Cable is the battered survivor of her brother Cyrus’ death by suicide, a devastating romance, and a career-ending injury. Only 11 when Cyrus stepped in front of a train, she was already marked out as different in her rural Tennessee hometown by her extraordinary musical ability. The siblings had huddled together against their angry mother’s frequent beatings, and Livia still feels abandoned by Cyrus years later, when she picks up the phone to hear the voice of Sigurd, the fiery labor organizer she loved and lost to “the revolution” while on scholarship at the Indiana University School of Music. Now married to kind, steady childhood friend Charlie, Livia looks back on her affair with Sigurd as she struggles to deal with the recent death of her mother, a compulsive hoarder who left a house stuffed with junk to be disposed of and bitter memories that haven’t faded over time. Kingsolver skillfully juggles the two time frames to unravel Livia’s complicated feelings about the life she lost when her right hand was crushed and the life she has now as a country piano teacher. A partita, she explains to Sigurd early on, “is a composition made of a lot of parts with a lot of different moods…the artist’s work is to make them all add up to something that feels whole.” That’s precisely what Kingsolver does in this beautifully paced and judged narrative, which builds to revelations uncovered amid the piles of trash in Livia’s childhood home about the reasons for Cyrus’ suicide (clearly foreshadowed) and their mother’s rage (startling and heartbreaking). A fierce belief that great art is for everyone joins Kingsolver’s familiar preoccupations with class distinctions, social injustice, and the complex bonds of family and community in a tender denouement.
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9780063577541
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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