DUST OFF THE BONES
Howarth, Paul Harper/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $26.99 | Jun. 8, 2021 978-0-06-307-600-6 A tale of violence and redemption in the Australian Outback. In this sequel to Only Killers and Thieves (2018), Howarth carries the story of brothers Billy and Tommy McBride forward following their involvement as teenagers in the unprovoked massacre of members of an Aboriginal tribe after the murders of their parents and sister. Billy has married and become a prosperous Queensland cattle rancher while the younger and more sensitive Tommy assumes a new identity and roams Australia’s vast open spaces on perilous cattle drives. Haunting both men are memories of their role in the mass slaughter, conducted at the direction of Edmund Noone, the brutal commander of the Native Police, an organization notorious in Australian history for carrying out genocidal
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kirkus.com
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fiction
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1 april 2021
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y o u n g a d u lt
McCall, cool and self-possessed, is quick to befriend Nella, echoing her frustrations with the never-spoken racial politics of their office, encouraging her to speak up. But it doesn’t take long for Nella to realize there’s something off about Hazel, even if she can’t quite put her finger on it. There’s something weird about how easily she fits in among the higher-ups at Wagner, about the way she’s instantly and universally beloved by top editors, the way her story—born in Harlem, daughter of civil rights activists, a grandfather who died protesting—exactly matches their ideas about Blackness in a way that Nella’s middle-class suburban childhood never will. And then, shortly after Hazel’s arrival, the first anonymous note arrives on Nella’s desk: “Leave Wagner Now.” Hazel? And if not Hazel, then who? Nella begins searching for answers—and in the process, finds herself at the center of a dangerous conspiracy that runs far deeper than she ever could have known. If it sounds like a moralistic sledgehammer of a novel—well, it would be if Harris were any less good. In her hands, though, it’s a nuanced page-turner, as sharp as it is fun. A biting social satire–cum-thriller; dark, playful, and brimming with life.
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