“An energetic and bold tale of one of history’s most enterprising journalists.” the mad girls of new york
COVER STORY
everyone from Carrion Crow and also that he will continue to be treated not as a human being but as a weapon for the clan. Xiala, meanwhile, is desperate to find Serapio but is lost in an unfamiliar city and eventually makes some uneasy alliances in order to protect him. And Naranpa, the dethroned Sun Priest, literally crawls out from a tomb and discovers that she and her opposite, Serapio, may not be such opposites after all. The second in a trilogy, this novel does suffer from some inevitable pitfalls. There’s a lot of cleaning up after the end of Book 1 and more setting the stage for what’s to come. But even a middle book from Roanhorse is still a book from Roanhorse, with all the excellent plot machinations and stellar prose that readers know to expect from her. She delves further into the political history of the Meridian and saves room for a few big twists to wind up the anticipation for Book 3. An excellent second installment that adds even more detail and intrigue.
Rigetti, Susan Morrow/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $27.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-06-307205-3 An unsophisticated intern at a fashion magazine fears her new, wealthy mentor may be a con artist. Rigetti’s entertaining first novel lays out how easily a grifter can take advantage of the system—and the naïve. And no one seems to be a better target for a con artist than unsophisticated would-be writer Lora Ricci from Allentown, Pennsylvania. Lora has just started an internship at glamorous Elle magazine in Manhattan, but she feels overwhelmed. She has failed her courses at NYU and is hiding her lost scholarship from her parents, and she knows she’s at a disadvantage compared to the other trust fund–fueled interns around her. Then she meets charismatic contributing editor Cat Wolff, heiress to an Austrian billionaire’s fortune, who offers her an opportunity that seems too good to be true. She invites Lora to move into her huge suite at the Plaza Hotel so that Lora can ghostwrite short stories for her, a plan that will surely catapult them to a lucrative literary contract. A savvier writer might balk at such a ridiculous suggestion—trying to climb the literary ladder is hardly the best way to access instant wealth—but the plan sounds plausible to the increasingly desperate Lora, who doesn’t know what to do when her internship ends. Meanwhile, readers know something that Lora does not: Rigetti reveals from the start of this clever, fast-paced book that Cat is not all that she seems. The novel’s opening pages consist of an FBI transcript, and Rigetti tells the story using a variety of ephemera—journal entries, Instagram posts, texts—to heighten the mystery as Lora begins to question Cat’s motives and actions. This isn’t a book to take too seriously, but the crafty Rigetti makes fraud a lot of fun. An entertaining shell game of a novel.
THE MAD GIRLS OF NEW YORK
Rodale, Maya Berkley (336 pp.) $17.00 paper | April 26, 2022 978-0-593-43675-2
Indomitable investigative journalist Nellie Bly spends 10 days in a notorious asylum in Rodale’s historical novel. It’s 1887, and after four months spent knocking on doors on Newspaper Row, aspiring journalist Nellie Bly has yet to take New York City by storm. The ever determined 23-year-old is especially good at asking questions and believing in herself, but so far all her tenacity has gotten her is a recommendation to write for the ladies’ papers. It doesn’t help that every prominent male editor in the city has the same belief—women are too delicate, too emotional, too inaccurate to efficiently report the news. So when Nellie stumbles upon an underground women’s group called the Ladies’ Ordinary, she’s thrilled to discover a secret weapon that will help her prove her worth. There, Nellie meets a crew of women journalists who introduce her to the world of stunt reporting: “Nothing sells like a crusade and a girl in danger.” With her friends’ help, Nellie meets with Col. John Cockerill, the World ’s editor, and convinces him to hire her as a stuntwoman reporter who will infiltrate the infamous Blackwell’s Island insane asylum for women. Easily enough, Nellie finds herself en route to the island, but what awaits her in the middle of the East River is more dreadful than she dared prepare for. When one week turns into 10 days, and with the Sun’s Sam Colton hot on her story’s tail, Nellie wonders if she’ll be able to survive her dire circumstances long enough to relay her exposé to the world. While Rodale takes some liberties—for example, Blackwell’s darkly humorous “Prayer Girl” is based on one line of the real Nellie Bly’s “Ten Days in a Mad-House” (1887)—all her main characters are inspired by real historical figures. Rodale’s affinity for writing about powerful women is clear, and she aptly records the lengths they would go to in order
FEVERED STAR
Roanhorse, Rebecca Saga/Simon & Schuster (416 pp.) $27.99 | April 19, 2022 978-1-5344-3773-9 The much-anticipated second book in Roanhorse’s Between Earth and Sky series finds Serapio, Naranpa, and Xiala scrambling to find their footing after the explosive ending of Black Sun. Having executed his dark purpose as the Crow God’s human avatar and causing a mysterious eclipse that blocks the sun over the city of Tova, Serapio wakes up gravely injured. One of the giant crows of clan Carrion Crow rescued him, and Okoa, the captain of the Shield, is nursing him back to health. Serapio learns that he can’t necessarily trust 26
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15 february 2022
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fiction
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kirkus.com
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