Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll

October 2023

Jessica Knoll’s BRIGHT YOUNG WOMEN brilliantly looks at an unnamed serial killer who we will recognize as the man who murdered two young women and seriously hurt two more in a horrific crime spree at a sorority house in Tallahassee in 1978. I remember this real-life incident so well, as I was in college at the time and thought how completely terrifying that situation had to be. This was the same person who had been on the prowl in the Seattle area before making his way to Colorado, where he killed and then escaped from prison twice. Along the way, at least 20 women were murdered, but the number could have totaled as many as 100.

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The Museum of Failures by Thrity Umrigar

October 2023

In Thrity Umrigar’s THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES, Remy Wadia is headed back to India for the first time since his father died. He and his mother have a very fractured relationship. She is tough and cold towards him, and he has no idea what he did to warrant this treatment. He has returned with a mission in mind: to adopt a baby. He is married and living in Ohio with his American wife, Kathy. Life there is full and brilliant, and he has a loving relationship with her family. But they both long for a child, and the opportunity to adopt an Indian baby has been shared with Remy's good friends in India. They know a woman who is pregnant and in the wrong relationship to keep her child. 

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The 2023 Kirkus Prize

The winners of the 2023 Kirkus Prize in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction and Young Readers’ Literature were announced on October 11th in a hybrid ceremony at the Tribeca Rooftop in New York that also was live-streamed on YouTube. This year’s winners were chosen from the 10,794 titles --- published between November 1, 2022 and October 31, 2023 (for Fiction and Nonfiction), and October 1, 2022 and September 30, 2023 (for Young Readers’ Literature) --- that were reviewed by Kirkus.

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Michele Campbell, author of The Intern

Madison Rivera lands the internship of a lifetime working for Judge Kathryn Conroy. But Madison has a secret that could destroy her career. Her troubled younger brother, Danny, has been arrested, and Conroy is the judge on his case. When Danny goes missing after accusing the judge of corruption, Madison’s quest for answers brings her deep into the judge’s glamorous world. Is Kathryn Conroy a mentor, a victim or a criminal? Is she trying to help Madison or use her as a pawn? And why is somebody trying to kill her? As the two women circle each other in a dangerous cat-and-mouse game, will they save each other, or will betrayal leave one of them dead?

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Ashley Winstead, author of Midnight Is the Darkest Hour

In her small hometown of Bottom Springs, Louisiana, librarian Ruth Cornier has always felt like an outsider, even as her beloved father rains fire-and-brimstone warnings from the pulpit at Holy Fire Baptist. Unfortunately for Ruth, the only things the townspeople fear more than the God and the Devil are the myths that haunt the area, like the story of the Low Man, a vampiric figure said to steal into sinners' bedrooms and kill them on moonless nights. When a skull is found deep in the swamp next to mysterious carved symbols, Bottom Springs is thrown into uproar --- and Ruth realizes only she and Everett, an old friend with a dark past, have the power to comb the town's secret underbelly in search of true evil.

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Kim Cross, author of In Light of All Darkness: Inside the Polly Klaas Kidnapping and the Search for America's Child

On October 1, 1993, 12-year-old Polly Klaas was kidnapped at knifepoint from her bedroom in Petaluma, California, during a sleepover with two friends. This rarest of all kidnappings --- a stranger abduction from the home --- triggered one of the largest manhunts in FBI history. The emotional gravity of Polly’s story touched every agent, police officer and forensic technician who worked on her case. Many of these investigators have never shared their stories --- until now. Kim Cross has written the first comprehensive account of what happened on that fateful night in October, as well as how the case forever transformed the Bureau’s approach to solving crimes.

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