Upcoming: ICARUS 17 by Charles Cumming (Mysterious Press / Hemlock Press)

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Great news: Icarus 17, the fourth novel in Charles Cumming‘s Box 88 series, is due out this summer! Also, unlike many of the author’s other novels, it’ll be getting a simultaneous release in the UK and North America.

I’ve been a fan of Cumming’s novels since Typhoon (2009), which I definitely recommend to all fans of the genre. This latest series, following the missions of Lachlan Kite has been particularly good — each of the novels so far has been excellent, exploring the long-term consequences of past missions and decisions. Must-reads, in my opinion, for all fans of espionage fiction.

Here’s the synopsis for Icarus 17:

Master spy Lachlan Kite heads to Athens, Greece, after an old flame asks for help locating her missing son.

A threat to the lives of his wife and daughter in London forces elite intelligence agent Lachlan Kite to move his family to safety. Meanwhile Kite’s former girlfriend, Martha Raine, comes to him with a plea for help. Her twenty-year-old son, Max, has vanished without trace in Greece. Can Kite help to find him?

Analysts at Anglo-American intelligence agency BOX 88 discover that Max was in a relationship with an Israeli woman, Jessica Morrow, who has links to the Mossad. Morrow is being hunted by a ruthless criminal gang. Fearing the worst, Kite and Martha set out for Athens in a desperate attempt to locate Max and Jessica.

This is easily one of my most-anticipated novels of the year.

Charles Cumming’s Icarus 17 is due to be published by Mysterious Press in North America (July 7th) and Hemlock Press in the UK (July 2nd).

Also on CR: Reviews of Box 88, Judas 62, Kennedy 35, Typhoon, The Trinity Six, A Foreign Country, A Colder War, and The Man Between

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram

Quick Review: LIKE THIS, BUT FUNNIER by Hallie Cantor (Simon & Schuster)

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Interesting premise, but ultimately a strangely familiar story

TV writer Caroline Neumann is thirty-four and mired in professional envy and self-hatred. Even Harry, her usually supportive therapist husband, thinks it’s time for her to press pause on her career ambitions and focus on getting pregnant, despite Caroline’s serious ambivalence about having children.

When Caroline accidentally stumbles on Harry’s patient session notes and offhandedly mentions what she finds in a meeting with a producer, the momentum of Hollywood takes over. Before she knows it — and unbeknownst to Harry — Caroline finds herself pitching a TV show about the deepest, darkest secrets of her husband’s favorite patient, a woman known to Caroline only as the Teacher.

Amid the indignities of the Hollywood development process, Caroline must balance her burning desire for professional validation against her own morality and the health of her marriage. And when Caroline forms a real-life relationship with Teacher herself, the lines between art and life begin to blur further, shaking up Caroline’s understanding of what it means to be the “likeable female protagonist” of her own life.

One of my most-anticipated novels of the year (yes, I’m a big fan of Hollywood-related books), and this one had a very promising premise. It’s well-written, and the characters are believable and mostly well-composed. However, most of the commentary about and critique of Hollywood felt familiar, which made this a less-satisfying read than hoped. Continue reading →

Quick Review: TELEVISION by Lauren Rothery (Ecco)

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An interesting look at a Hollywood and relationships, told with an unusual premise

Some people you meet them and you imagine this movie together. The two of you make a kind of movie and then it’s over. Other people, what you imagine isn’t a movie, because it keeps going. It’s television… If you can’t see how romantic television is, you’re blind.

An aging, A-list movie star lotteries off the entirety of his mega-million blockbuster salary to a member of the general viewing public before taking up with a much younger model. His non-famous best friend (and often lover) looks on impassively, while recollecting their twenty-odd years of unlikely connection. And an aspiring filmmaker, unknown to them both, labors over a script about best friends and lovers while longing for the financial freedom to make great art.

Told in their alternating, intricately linked perspectives, Television is a funny, philosophically astute novel about phenomenal luck, whether windfall or chance encounter. Like Joan Didion’s classic Play It as It Lays, but speaking to a since irrevocably changed Hollywood, it portrays a culture in crisis and the disparities in wealth, beauty, talent, gender, and youth at the heart of contemporary American life. In this glittering but strange new world, lit up by social media and streaming services — what, if not love, can be counted in your favor?

Lauren Rothery’s Television was one of my most-anticipated novels of 2025, so I was very pleased when I received a DRC — it promised (and mostly delivered) an interesting look at a long-time friendship in Hollywood, altered but not damaged by diverging paths and differing levels of success. While I enjoyed the novel, there were some strange choices made. Continue reading →

Upcoming: EXIT PARTY by Emily St. John Mandel (Knopf/Picador)

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The covers for Exit Party, the highly-anticipated next novel by Emily St. John Mandel, were unveiled today by Knopf (North American publisher) and Picador (UK publisher). I spotted a listing for the book a few days ago in one of Knopf’s catalogues, and it immediately shot to the top of my Most Anticipated list (metaphorically — there isn’s an actual list). It’s not out until September, which feels very far away. Here’s the synopsis:

A novel of doubles, shadow worlds, and fractured timelines as a man disappears from a glittering Los Angeles party, and a woman — a gunrunner, an art collector, an operative of the State — searches for answers.

Los Angeles, 2031: The first spring after the collapse of the United States, peacekeeping troops withdraw from the city, the Jacaranda trees blossom, and the curfew is finally lifted. Ari Waker and her roommate pass the gauntlet of bomb-sniffing dogs, the shanty towns, and the Red Cross tents as they walk across Silverlake to a party. The mood is ecstatic inside the apartment, people drink and dance, a woman wears a silver dress, pleated like tinfoil. And then: A shift. A bewildered twin, an uncanny doppelganger stumbles through the crowd and out into the night, and Kareem, the party’s host, vanishes into thin air.

As Ari Waker unravels the mystery of this inexplicable night, Emily St. John Mandel unfurls a story that takes us from a future America splintered by civil war to the seaside cliffs of Greece where weapons dealers hide in an elegant resort, and from the domed city of Paris to a colony on the moon. An unforgettable literary feat, Exit Party is a novel about the price of safety, the perils of the surveillance state, a requiem for a world not unlike our own, and a breathtaking story of resilience in the face of cataclysmic change.

I’ve been a fan of the author’s ever since I read a (very) early ARC of Station Eleven, and have been an eager reader of every new novel that’s come out. The author’s previous novel, 2022’s Sea of Tranquility, was especially great so I’d recommend you give that a read as well, if you haven’t already.

Emily St. John Mandel’s Exit Party is due to be published by Knopf in North America (September 15th) and Picador in the UK (September 17th).

Also on CR: Reviews of Station Eleven, Last Night in Montreal, and Sea of Tranquility

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram, BlueSky

New Books (December 2025-January 2026)

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A strong ending to 2025 and start to 2026! Lots of highly-anticipated new books in this collection.

Featuring: RJ Barker, Tiffany Hanssen, Jason M. Hough, Allen Iverson (w. Ray Beauchamp), Ken Jaworowski, Michael McFaul, Michael Schur & Joe Posnanski, David R. Shedd & Andrew Badger, Caitlin Shetterly, Richard Swan, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Jason Zengerle

Continue reading →

Excerpt: YOUR BEHAVIOR WILL BE MONITORED by Justin Feinstein (Tachyon)

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The first excerpt for 2026 is from Your Behavior Will be Monitored by Justin Feinstein, which is due out in April via Tachyon Publications. Already generating a bit of buzz online, the novel wrestles with questions about “sentience, purpose, life, death, and how to make a really good commercial.” Here’s the synopsis:

Told entirely through questionably obtained company emails, chat transcripts, TED Talks, training sessions, and more, this all-too-probable future pits emotionally intelligent AI against emotionally stunted humans.

Megacorporation UniView is poised to cement their reputation as “the most trusted name in AI.” After pioneering the world’s first widely adopted AI bots, they are barreling toward an audacious new launch. That is, if they can pull it off in time.

Enter Noah. A down-and-out copywriter reeling from a midlife crisis, he isn’t the typical hire for a groundbreaking tech company full of brilliant engineers and run by a cutthroat CEO. But Lex, UniView’s Head of HR and one of their greatest successes, makes no mistakes ― her algorithm ensures it.

UniView’s latest venture ― a bot named Quinn that creates revolutionary personalized advertising ― needs expert training. Noah needs to teach Quinn ― which is a much better student than he ever could have hoped for ― the finer points of consumer motivation and the art of writing a catchy tagline.

But when corporate competitors force UniView to accelerate its timeline to market, guardrails around the AI loosen just as Quinn seems to be learning a bit too much.

Continue reading →

Very Quick Review: REVENGE PREY by John Sandford (G. P. Putnam’s Sons)

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Lucas Davenport hunts a Russian hit squad

Leonard Summers — not his real name — is on the run. A former high-ranking Russian intelligence officer who defected to the U.S. after providing critical information about Russian spies in U.S. government service, Leonard,  his wife Martha, and son Bernard have spent the past year holed up in a CIA facility near Washington. After the CIA makes a deal with the U.S. Marshal Service’s Witness Protection Program (WPP), Leonard’s family is transported to Minneapolis. The plan is to hide them in a wooded Minneapolis suburb that resembles their former home and dacha near Moscow.

The Summers are received at their destination by Lucas Davenport and fellow marshal Shelly White. Unbeknownst to them, the WPP group has been tracked by a Russian hit team. And while nobody in the WPP has ever been attacked… Leonard might be the first victim. As shots are fired and enemies dodged, Lucas must move quickly to uncover where the leak is coming from, before the hit team can strike again.

With what appears to be a perfect premise for a Lucas Davenport novel, Revenge Prey offers much of what long-time fans of Sandford’s thrillers have come to expect. However, unlike previous novels in the series, the 36th book seems to stumble in quality. Continue reading →

New Books (November-December)

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Another great selection of new books; and more fiction this time. I tend to get more in the run-up to the end of the year, so there may well be another one in 2025 (perhaps after Christmas).

Featuring: David Baldacci, Kate Christensen, Meg Elison, Thomas Elrod, Tod Goldberg, Guy Haley, Candice Millard, Lenore Nash, K. J. Parker, John Sandford, Olivier Sylvain, Chris Wraight

Continue reading →

Revis Returns with KILLING TIME

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After a 22-year-long wait, Revis releases their second album

Back in 2002-3, I lived in Japan for my second year of college. It was a strange year, as I struggled with the language (despite the many countries I’ve lived in, I’ve never had a facility for other languages). One of my favourite places ended up being the local Tower Records. I became friends with one of the staff members, who also happened to be the DJ at our local bar/club. Like me, he was a hard rock and metal fan, and we would cobble together conversations about new and favourite albums. Continue reading →

Excerpt: A GRAVE DECEPTION by Connie Berry (Crooked Lane)

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Next week, Crooked Lane Books will publish A Grave Deception by Connie Berry, the sixth novel in the Kate Hamilton Mysteries series. To mark the occasion, and give readers a taste of the book, the publisher has provided CR with an excerpt to share with our readers. First, here’s the synopsis:

Antiques expert Kate Hamilton dives into the past to solve a fourteenth-century mystery with disturbing similarities to a modern-day murder in the sixth installment of the Kate Hamilton mystery series.

Kate Hamilton and her husband, Detective Inspector Tom Mallory, have settled into married life in Long Barston. When archaeologists excavating the ruins of a nearby plague village discover the miraculously preserved body of a fourteenth-century woman, Kate and her colleague, Ivor Tweedy, are asked to appraise the grave goods, including a valuable pearl. When tests reveal the woman was pregnant and murdered, the owner of the estate on which the body was found, an amateur historian, asks Kate to identify her and, if possible, her killer. Surprised, Kate agrees to try.

Meanwhile, tensions within the archaeological team erupt when the body of the lead archaeologist turns up at the dig site with fake pearls in his mouth and stomach. Then a third body is found in the excavations. Meanwhile, Kate’s husband Tom is tracking the movements of a killer of his own.

With the help of 700-year-old documents and the unpublished research of a deceased historian, Kate must piece together the past before the grave count reaches four.

Continue reading →