Scribner

Quick Review: CORMORANT HUNT by Michael Idov (Scribner)

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A renegade CIA officer must infiltrate an extremist group in the heart of Europe…

Ari Falk has just blown the lid off a massive conspiracy at the highest level within the CIA. While some hail him as a hero for exposing government corruption, others brand him as a dangerous traitor to his country. His quiet exile in the Republic of Georgia is shattered when a new mission arises—one perfectly suited for someone as jaded and unpredictable as him.

A hot war in Europe and shadowy political schemes set the stage for danger at every turn. Enter Asha Tamaskar, a brilliant, neurodivergent CIA officer with her own secrets, and Felix Burnham, a chilling antagonist with radical alliances that could change the global balance of power. From Tbilisi to Prague and Andorra to Bethesda, Falk’s quest for justice takes him on a high-stakes journey around the world.

The Cormorant Hunt explores geopolitics with grit and authenticity, weaving together a narrative that is both urgent and unforgettable. Razor-sharp dialogue, heart-pounding twists, and complex characters abound—blending suspense, wit, and brilliant storytelling, this is a must-read for fans of political intrigue, espionage, and thrillers that don’t play by the rules.

This is Michael Idov’s second, fast-paced and gripping spy novel starring Ari Falk. It picks up soon after the end of the first book in the series, and offers another contemporary, well-written story, populated by engaging characters. After enjoying the first novel in the series (with just a few minor reservations), I’m pleased to say that I enjoyed this as well, and it does mark an improvement in Idov’s writing. Continue reading →

Quick Review: COLD PEOPLE by Tom Rob Smith (Scribner)

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SmithTR-ColdPeopleUSHCHumanity if forcibly removed to Antarctica, ceding control over the planet to an extraterrestrial force. It does… not go smoothly.

A suspenseful and fast-paced novel about an Antarctic colony of global apocalypse survivors seeking to reinvent civilization under the most extreme conditions imaginable.

The world has fallen. Without warning, a mysterious and omnipotent force has claimed the planet for their own. There are no negotiations, no demands, no reasons given for their actions. All they have is a message: humanity has thirty days to reach the one place on Earth where they will be allowed to exist… Antarctica.

Cold People follows the perilous journeys of a handful of those who endure the frantic exodus to the most extreme environment on the planet. But their goal is not merely to survive the present. Because as they cling to life on the ice, the remnants of their past swept away, they must also confront the urgent challenge: can they change and evolve rapidly enough to ensure humanity’s future? Can they build a new society in the sub-zero cold?

A gripping, fast-moving survival thriller, this is the first novel that I’ve read by Tom Rob Smith. It certainly won’t be my last. I really enjoyed this gripping, icy thriller. Continue reading →

Quick Review: THE END OF EVERYTHING by Katie Mack (Scribner)

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MackK-EndOfEverythingUSHCA fantastic introduction to the possible ways in which the universe will end…

From one of the most dynamic rising stars in astrophysics, an accessible and eye-opening look at five ways the universe could end, and the mind-blowing lessons each scenario reveals about the most important concepts in cosmology.

We know the universe had a beginning. With the Big Bang, it expanded from a state of unimaginable density to an all-encompassing cosmic fireball to a simmering fluid of matter and energy, laying down the seeds for everything from black holes to one rocky planet orbiting a star near the edge of a spiral galaxy that happened to develop life as we know it. But what happens to the universe at the end of the story? And what does it mean for us now?

Dr. Katie Mack has been contemplating these questions since she was a young student, when her astronomy professor informed her the universe could end at any moment, in an instant. This revelation set her on the path toward theoretical astrophysics. Now, with lively wit and humor, she takes us on a mind-bending tour through five of the cosmos’s possible finales: the Big Crunch, Heat Death, the Big Rip, Vacuum Decay (the one that could happen at any moment!), and the Bounce. Guiding us through cutting-edge science and major concepts in quantum mechanics, cosmology, string theory, and much more, The End of Everything is a wildly fun, surprisingly upbeat ride to the farthest reaches of all that we know.

It has been a long time since I last took a science class — not just physics, but really any kind. I’ve kept my interest in the subject somewhat alive mainly through podcasts (for example, The Infinite Monkey cage, which is co-hosted by Brian Cox). Somehow, I managed to leave Katie Mack’s The End of Everything unread for quite some time. I started reading it late one night, and was hooked right from the start. This is an excellent book: one that should appeal to knowledgable scientists and the merely science-curious alike. I really enjoyed this. (And learned a lot!) Continue reading →

Very Quick Review: THE SILENCE by Don DeLillo (Scribner)

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DeLilloD-SilenceUSA very short novel, with little time to develop

Don DeLillo completed this novel just weeks before the advent of Covid-19. The Silence is the story of a different catastrophic event. Its resonances offer a mysterious solace.

It is Super Bowl Sunday in the year 2022. Five people, dinner, an apartment on the east side of Manhattan. The retired physics professor and her husband and her former student waiting for the couple who will join them from what becomes a dramatic flight from Paris. The conversation ranges from a survey telescope in North-central Chile to a favorite brand of bourbon to Einstein’s 1912 Manuscript on the Special Theory of Relativity.

Then something happens and the digital connections that have transformed our lives are severed.

What follows is a dazzling and profoundly moving conversation about what makes us human. Never has the art of fiction been such an immediate guide to our navigation of a bewildering world. Never have DeLillo’s prescience, imagination, and language been more illuminating and essential.

I’ve not read much of DeLillo’s fiction. I was intrigued by The Silence, however, because of the premise. This was a very quick read, and while interesting I think the synopsis oversells it quite dramatically. Continue reading →

Quick Review: TURBULENCE by David Szalay (Scribner/Jonathan Cape)

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SzalayD-TurbulenceUSA novel of the intersection of twelve lives

A woman strikes up a conversation with the man sitting next to her on a plane after some turbulence. He returns home to tragic news that has also impacted another stranger, a shaken pilot on his way to another continent who seeks comfort from a journalist he meets that night. Her life shifts subtly as well, before she heads to the airport on an assignment that will shift more lives in turn.

In this wondrous, profoundly moving novel, Szalay’s diverse protagonists circumnavigate the planet in twelve flights, from London to Madrid, from Dakar to Sao Paulo, to Toronto, to Delhi, to Doha, en route to see lovers or estranged siblings, aging parents, baby grandchildren, or nobody at all. Along the way, they experience the full range of human emotions from loneliness to love and, knowingly or otherwise, change each other in one brief, electrifying interaction after the next.

This is the first of David Szalay’s novels that I have read, and it will not be the last: I was very impressed. A relatively short novel, it offers an interesting look at the lives of twelve different people and the events that connect them. Insightful and interesting, I enjoyed this. Continue reading →

Upcoming: THE DREAMERS by Karen Thompson Walker (Random House/Scribner UK)

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I haven’t read Karen Thompson Walker‘s previous novel, the critically-acclaimed The Age of Miracles, but it’s been on my radar for quite some time (and slowly climbing my TBR mountain). In January 2019, the author’s next novel The Dreamers is due to be published by Random House (in North America) and Scribner (in the UK). It sounds really interesting, with a nice science fictional quirk, so it may appeal to many readers of CR:

An ordinary town is transformed by a mysterious illness that triggers perpetual sleep…

One night in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a first-year student stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep — and doesn’t wake up. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. When a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, Mei finds herself thrust together with an eccentric classmate as panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. A young couple tries to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. Two sisters turn to each other for comfort as their survivalist father prepares for disaster.

Those affected by the illness, doctors discover, are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, higher than has ever been recorded before. They are dreaming heightened dreams — but of what?

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Twitter

Review(ish): FARGO ROCK CITY by Chuck Klosterman and TWILIGHT OF THE GODS by Steven Hyden

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KlostermanC-FargoRockCityUSChuck Klosterman and Steven Hyden are great guides to the worlds of rock and metal music, and their respective (and oft-overlapping) fandoms. In the two books covered in this feature, they examine the bands that meant the most to them, how their music fandom shaped their youths, and also the changes in the industry and soundscapes of the years that forged their tastes. Klosterman’s book is more connected to his own biography, while Hyden’s takes a more in-depth, long-view examination of what makes some rock music “classic”, and how the genre’s mythology has become ever more contentious and troubling. Both authors are passionate music fans and eloquently opinionated. As a result, they are also great guides to rock and metal music. If you have any interest in rock and metal music, then I would certainly recommend these two books. Continue reading →

Upcoming: THE BIRTH OF LOUD by Ian S. Port (Scribner)

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PortIS-BirthOfLoudUSBruce Springsteen’s telecaster, Slash’s Les Paul, Kurt Cobain’s stratocaster, Angus Young’s SG… These were the guitars that exemplified rock music for me when I was younger. The story of rock goes hand-in-hand with these two guitar manufacturers, while there are other heavy-hitters in the industry, none have the same cache as these two. (Gibson is my personal favourite.) In January 2019, Scribner are due to publish The Birth of Loud, Ian S. Port‘s history of the two men who created these brands. I’m really looking forward to reading this. Here’s the synopsis:

A riveting saga in the history of rock ‘n’ roll: the decades-long rivalry between the two men who innovated the electric guitar’s amplified sound — Leo Fender and Les Paul — and their intense competition to convince rock stars like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton to play the instruments they built.

In the years after World War II, music was evolving from big-band jazz into the primordial elements of rock ’n’ roll — and these louder styles demanded revolutionary instruments. When Leo Fender’s tiny firm marketed the first solid-body electric guitar, the Esquire, musicians immediately saw its appeal. Not to be out-maneuvered, Gibson, the largest guitar manufacturer, raced to build a competitive product. The company designed an “axe” that would make Fender’s Esquire look cheap and convinced Les Paul — whose endorsement Leo Fender had sought — to put his name on it. Thus was born the guitar world’s most heated rivalry: Gibson versus Fender, Les versus Leo.

While Fender was a quiet, half-blind, self-taught radio repairman from rural Orange County, Paul was a brilliant but egomaniacal pop star and guitarist who spent years toying with new musical technologies. Their contest turned into an arms race as the most inventive musicians of the 1950s and 1960s — including bluesman Muddy Waters, rocker Buddy Holly, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton — adopted one maker’s guitar or another. By the time Jimi Hendrix played “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock in 1969 on his Fender Stratocaster, it was clear that electric instruments — Fender or Gibson — had launched music into a radical new age, empowering artists with a vibrancy and volume never before attainable.

Back in June 2018, the Washington Post published a story about “The death of the electric guitar”, which I would also highly recommend.

The Birth of Loud will be published by Scribner in the US, Canada and in the UK.

Follow the Author: Goodreads, Twitter

Books on Film: THE WIFE by Meg Wolitzer

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Later this year (August), Sony Pictures will release the film adaptation of Meg Wolitzer’s The Wife. Directed by Björn Runge, screenplay by Jane Anderson, and starring Glenn Close, Christian Slater and Jonathan Pryce, it looks interesting.

Wolitzer’s novel is published by Scribner in North America and Vintage in the UK (at the time of writing, the novel is a Kindle Monthly Deal in the UK, too). Here’s the synopsis:

A provocative story about the evolution of a marriage, the nature of partnership, the question of a male or female sensibility, and the place for an ambitious woman in a man’s world.

The moment Joan Castleman decides to leave her husband, they are thirty-five thousand feet above the ocean on a flight to Helsinki. Joan’s husband, Joseph, is one of America’s preeminent novelists, about to receive a prestigious international award, and Joan, who has spent forty years subjugating her own literary talents to fan the flames of his career, has finally decided to stop. From this gripping opening, Meg Wolitzer flashes back to 1950s Smith College and Greenwich Village and follows the course of the marriage that has brought the couple to this breaking point — one that results in a shocking revelation.

With her skillful storytelling and pitch-perfect observations, Wolitzer has crafted a wise and candid look at the choices all men and women make — in marriage, work, and life.

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Meg Wolitzer’s latest novel, The Female Persuasion is out now, published by Riverhead in North America (out now) and Chatto & Windus in the UK (to be published in June).

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Twitter

Interview with TYRELL JOHNSON

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JohnsonT-AuthorPicLet’s start with an introduction: Who is Tyrell Johnson?

Well, my Twitter bio says I’m a father, husband, writer, editor, and donkey trainer. So at least a few of those things MUST be true.

Your new novel, The Wolves of Winter, will be published by HQ this month. It looks rather fabulous: How would you introduce it to a potential reader? Is it part of a series?

It’s a post-apocalyptic thriller about a young woman surviving in the Yukon wilderness with her family. When she encounters a strange man in the wilderness, his dark past calls her to a role she never imagined. I’d love to announce that it’s part of a series, but since nothing is “in the books” yet, I don’t want to jump the gun. Continue reading →