Fiction

Excerpt: SMOKE ON THE WIND by Kelli Estes (Lake Union)

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Smoke on the Wind, the latest novel by Kelli Estes, was published recently by Lake Union Publishing. A novel that tells the story of two mothers separated by centuries in Scotland. To mark its release, CR has been given permission to share the first couple of chapters as an excerpt! Before we get to that, though, here’s the synopsis…

Struggling with the tragic end of her marriage, Keaka Denney is on a bittersweet adventure in Scotland with her son, Colin. She’s joining him on a weeklong hike along the West Highland Way before he enters university in Glasgow. Soon into the journey, Keaka’s disquieting visions begin―a woman from ages past reaching for Colin, a burning cottage, violence.

Scotland, 1801. After Sorcha Chisholm and her son are wrenched from their home in a brutal eviction, they face an arduous trek toward a new beginning. When Sorcha learns she’s wanted for a murder she didn’t commit, she and her son run for their lives. Then help arrives from the strangest woman in the most unexpected ways.

Centuries apart, Keaka and Sorcha walk the same path―devoted mothers in circumstances beyond their control who will do anything to keep their sons safe. Defying logic, they find strength in each other. But what does their connection mean? And how far will it go?

And now, on with the excerpt…

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Upcoming: IN A DISTANT VALLEY by Shannon Bowring (Europa Editions)

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In October, Europa Editions are due to publish In a Distant Valley, the third Dalton novel by Shannon Bowring. The first two novels — The Road to Dalton and Where the Forest Meets the River — were superb, and I’ve been eagerly anticipating Bowring’s third novel ever since finishing the second. Easily one of my most-anticipated novels of the year. Here’s the synopsis:

Both a love letter and a window into the rural places that have shaped many, In a Distant Valley sets the stage for a final act to play out across a deep winter in snowy Maine.

For a while, Rose Douglas believed life had given her a break. She was enjoying a steady job at the local clinic in Dalton; her two young boys, Adam and Brandon, were doing well in school; and their little family had found an easy friendship with widower Nate Theroux and his daughter, Sophie. The possibility of something deeper even hung between her and Nate—until the day Tommy Merchant, her ex and the father of her sons, showed up without warning on her doorstep. While Rose knows all too well his erratic and abusive nature, he swears he’s clean, and ready to turn over a new leaf.

Tommy isn’t the only one who’s found his way back to the town that defined him. Lost after a disastrous stint living down south with her father, Angela Muse has returned home to Dalton. There she runs into Greg Fortin, the friend who once saved her life when they were children and finally starts to believe there may be someone who understands her in a world that offers more questions than answers.

But secrets are the lifeblood of a small town, and everyone in Dalton soon finds themselves part of a chain of events hurtling towards outcomes beyond their control, where more than one future will be decided. Brimming with compassion and heart, In a Distant Valley is the remarkable conclusion to the story readers have been following since Shannon Bowring’s debut novel, The Road to Dalton.

Shannon Bowring’s In a Distant Valley is due to be published by Europa Editions on October 7th.

Also on CR: Reviews of The Road to Dalton and Where the Forest Meets the River

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Excerpt: THE EXCLUSION ZONE by Alexis von Konigslow (Wolsak & Wynn)

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Today we have an excerpt from The Exclusion Zone by Alexis von Konigslow. Due to be published by Wolsak & Wynn, on May 6th. It is a novel that takes a look at the impact of politics on science, and women in science in particular. It has been described as “part ghost story, part literary thriller”, and I am looking forward to giving it a try. Here’s the synopsis:

She would harness fear. And this terrifying place would help her do it.

Renya, a scientist who studies how people react to fear, flees a troubled marriage to conduct research on the scientists working in the “exclusion zone” around Chernobyl. In the eerily silent forests surrounding the research station, she finds more is haunting her than the dangers of radiation exposure. As she gathers data from her colleagues and probes historical records of the Chernobyl disaster, unsettling questions rise to the surface. Who is funding her research? Why are all the scientists’ findings off? And what do those who stalk the ruins of the abandoned city nearby want?

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Upcoming: MAKING HISTORY by K. J. Parker (TorDotCom)

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TorDotCom recently unveiled the cover for K. J. Parker‘s next novella, Making History. If you’ve been reading CR for even a little while, you’ve probably noticed that I am a big fan of Parker’s work; and especially his novellas and short stories (many of the former have been published by TorDotCom). That it is written by Parker is enough for me to want to read it, but the synopsis only increased my interest:

History isn’t truth… it’s propaganda.

Academics can be cocky. Atop their perches of authority high above the unquestioning world they can begin to fancy themselves gods. It is rare this authority is ever tested. But a command from an idiotic, power-hungry king — that’ll do it.

Our narrator is one of a dozen professors at the University of the Kingdom of Aelia. Early one morning, he and his colleagues are rounded up for an audience with their dictator, Gyges. You see, Gyges is new to the job — he only just invaded Aelia last year — and like any good tyrant, he’s looking to expand his empire. But his public image can’t take the hit of (another) unjustified assault. No problem, he’s come up with a plan — the scholars will simply construct an ancient city from scratch that justifies his next invasion.

Now these bookworms must put their heads together to do the impossible. They must make history. Because if they don’t, they’ll lose their heads all together.

Definitely one of my top 10 most-anticipated books of 2025, K. J. Parker’s Making History is due to be published by TorDotCom on September 2nd, in North America and in the UK.

Also on CR: Reviews of The Devil You Know, The Last Witness, Downfall of the Gods, My Beautiful Life, Prosper’s Demon, Academic Exercises, The Big Score, The Long Game, and Pulling the Wings Off Angels

Follow the Author: Goodreads

Quick Review: THE LIGHTNING BOTTLES by Marissa Stapley (Simon & Schuster)

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A mystery and a love-letter to the 90s music scene

A story of rock ‘n’ roll and star-crossed love — about grunge-era musician Jane Pyre’s journey to find out what really happened to her husband and partner in music, who abruptly disappeared years earlier.

He was the troubled face of rock ‘n’ roll… until he suddenly disappeared without a trace.

Jane Pyre was once half of the famous rock ‘n’ roll duo, the Lightning Bottles. Years later, she’s perhaps the most hated — and least understood — woman in music. She was never as popular with fans as her bandmate (and soulmate), Elijah Hart — even if Jane was the one who wrote the songs that catapulted the Lightning Bottles to instant, dizzying fame, first in the Seattle grunge scene, then around the world.

But ever since Elijah disappeared five years earlier and the band’s meteoric rise to fame came crashing down, the public hatred of Jane has taken on new levels, and all she wants to do is retreat. What she doesn’t anticipate is the bombshell that awaits her at her new home in the German countryside: the sullen teenaged girl next door — a Lightning Bottles superfan — who claims to have proof that not only is Elijah still alive, he’s also been leaving secret messages for Jane. And they need to find them right away.

A cross-continent road trip about two misunderstood outsiders brought together by their shared love of music, The Lightning Bottles is both a love letter to the 90s and a searing portrait of the cost of fame.

As a music fan who grew up during the 1990s, it was almost inevitable that I would be drawn to Marissa Stapley’s latest novel. Packed with nods to that era’s music history and mythology, The Lightning Bottles is an engaging tale of music, love, ambition, and fame; as well as what happens after an artist disappears (from the scene and, in this case, literally). I really enjoyed this. Continue reading →

Upcoming/Out Now: THE PROOF OF MY INNOCENCE by Jonathan Coe (Europa Editions / Viking)

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I’m woefully behind on Jonathan Coe‘s novels, but his latest has really caught my eye (and will probably shoot right to the top of my TBR pile). The Proof of My Innocence is a “political critique wrapped up in a murder mystery”, all told with Coe’s signature wit. The novel is out already in the UK (published by Viking), and it’s due to arrive in North America in April (published by Europa Editions). Here’s the synopsis:

Post-university life doesn’t suit Phyl. Time passes slowly living back home with her parents, working a zero-hour contract serving Japanese food to tourists at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. As for her budding plans of becoming a writer, those are going nowhere.

That is, until family friend Chris comes to stay. He’s been on the path to uncover a sinister think-tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, that’s been scheming to push the British government in a more extreme direction. One that’s finally poised to put their plans into action. But speaking truth to power can be dangerous — and power will stop at nothing to stay on top.

As Britain finds itself under the leadership of a new Prime Minister whose tenure will only last for seven weeks, Chris pursues his story to a conference being held deep in the Cotswolds, where events take a sinister turn and a murder enquiry is soon in progress. But will the solution to the mystery lie in contemporary politics, or in a literary enigma that is almost forty years old?

Darting between decades and genres, The Proof of My Innocence is a wickedly funny and razor-sharp new novel from one of Britain’s most beloved novelists, showing how the key to understanding the present can often be found in the murkiest corners of the past.

Jonathan Coe’s The Proof of My Innocence is due to be published in North America by Europa Editions (April 15th, 2025), and it’s published in the UK by Viking Books (out now).

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram, BlueSky

Upcoming: ATMOSPHERE by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Ballantine Books / Hutchinson Heinemann)

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The next novel from Taylor Jenkins Reid was announced a little while ago. Atmosphere is “an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program and the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.” Long-time readers of CR will know how much I’ve enjoyed Reid’s previous novels — Daisy Jones & the Six, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and Malibu Rising are particular favourites — so it should come as no surprise that Atmosphere is one of my most-anticipated novels of 2025. North American and UK editions have already been announced. Here’s the synopsis:

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilots Hank Redmond and John Griffin, who are kind and easy-going even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, with complex protagonists, telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love, this time among the stars.

Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere is due to be published by Ballantine Books in North America (June) and Hutchinson Heinemann in the UK, on June 3rd, 2025.

Also on CR: Reviews of Daisy Jones & the Six and Malibu Rising

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Upcoming: SO FAR GONE by Jess Walter (Harper)

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I’m a relative newcomer to Jess Walter‘s work, and thus-far I’ve only read his short fiction — all of which has been superb, and I can’t recommend We Live in Water and The Angel of Rome highly enough. His extensive backlist includes crime/mysteries and contemporary fiction, all of which I’ve acquired over the past few years. I very much intend to get caught up on his books, but if I don’t get myself around to it in time, I think his latest may be the first of his novels that I read. So Far Gone is out next summer, and it sounds great:

A hilarious, empathetic, and brilliantly provocative adventure through life in modern America, about a reclusive journalist forced back into the world to rescue his kidnapped grandchildren.

Rhys Kinnick has gone off the grid. At Thanksgiving a few years back, a fed-up Rhys punched his conspiracy-theorist son-in-law in the mouth, chucked his smartphone out a car window and fled for a cabin in the woods, with no one around except a pack of hungry raccoons.

Now, seven years later, Kinnick’s old life is about to land right back on his crumbling doorstep. Can this failed husband and father, a man with no phone, no computer, and a car that barely runs, reemerge into a broken world to track down his missing daughter and save his sweet, precocious grandchildren from the members of a dangerous militia?

With the help of his caustic ex-girlfriend, a bipolar retired detective, and his only friend (who happens to be furious with him), Kinnick heads off on a madcap journey through cultural lunacy and the rubble of a life he thought he’d left behind.

Jess Walter’s So Far Gone is due to be published by Harper in North America and in the UK, on June 10th, 2025.

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram

Upcoming: THE RUSH by Beth Lewis (Viper)

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Next summer, Viper is due to publish The Rush, the new novel from Beth Lewis — author of the widely-acclaimed The Wolf Road. I’ll admit, it was the cover that caught my attention first (it’s frankly stunning), but after reading the synopsis it went right on my Must Read 2025 list. Here’s what it’s about:

Gold fever has taken him. I believe he means to kill me…

Canada, 1898. The Gold Rush is on in the frozen wilderness of the Yukon. Fortunes are made as quickly as they’re lost, and Dawson City has become a lawless settlement.

In its midst, three women are trying to find their place on the edge of civilisation. Journalist Kate, along with her dog Yukon, has travelled hundreds of miles after receiving a letter from her sister warning that her husband means to kill her. Martha’s hotel and livelihood are under threat from the local strongman, who is set on buying up the town. And down by the river, where gold shimmers from between the rocks, Ellen feels her future slip away as her husband fails to find the fortune they risked so much to seek.

When a woman is found murdered, Kate, Martha and Ellen find their lives, fates and fortunes intertwined. But to unmask her killer, they must navigate a desperate land run by dangerous men who will do anything for a glimpse of gold…

I’ve always had a fondness for novels set in this time period (also a fascination with this period in history in general). I’m really looking forward to reading this.

Beth Lewis’s The Rush is due to be published by Viper Books in the UK, on June 12th, 2025. (At the time of writing, I couldn’t find any information about a North American publisher and/or release.)

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Excerpt: WHEN WE CHASED THE LIGHT by Emily Meeker (Lake Union)

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Tomorrow, Lake Union is due to publish the latest novel by Emily Beeker: When We Chased the Light. A new novel set in Golden Age Hollywood, here’s the synopsis:

A Hollywood legend. A legacy of secrets. An epic and emotional novel about forgiveness, fame, family, and truly unconditional love by the bestselling author of When We Were Enemies.

Christie’s auction house, Beverly Hills. The effects of Hollywood icon Vivian Snow are up for bid. In the collection is a set of hand-drawn postcards spanning six decades. The sender is Antonio Trombello, a soldier, POW, priest, and Vivian’s confidant. Each postcard sheds new light on a deeply private woman the public only thinks it knows.

It’s World War II. Vivian is a USO showgirl traveling the world when her husband goes AWOL, disappears, and is presumed dead. Facing increasing suspicion, she leans on her dear friend Father Trombello for support. He’s her confessor, her savior, the elusive love of her life, and when it comes to her husband’s death, the keeper of Vivian’s secrets.

As Vivian rises from canteen dream girl to starlet to bona fide legend, she navigates the highs and lows of Hollywood, new romances, and tumultuous family relationships ― all in the shadow of her past and the guilt, unmet longing, and buried truths that could still upend the lives of everyone she loves.

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