Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Books | July 30, 2026
Crucible by John Sayles
This is probably my book of the year so far. Someone else please read it so I have someone to talk about it with.
— Kayleigh Donaldson (@ceilidhann.bsky.social) July 8, 2026 at 10:29 PM
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Henry Ford has grand ideas for the future of his company. He wants to move away from the car model that made him famous, a process that will require laying off hundreds of workers. Eager to seize the means of production, he dreams up a utopian society in the middle of the Amazon jungle where his team will grow and process their own rubber for his car tyres. It's 1929 and the world is changing. In his orbit, dozens of people will try to carve out lives for themselves, as well as freedoms that go against the Ford ethos.
So, I'm just going to spoil my end-of-year list and say that, as of the writing of this piece, Crucible is my favourite new book of 2026. This is an excellent read. You may know John Sayles better as a filmmaker, the man behind American indie classics like Passion Fish and Lone Star. It turns out he's also a long-time novelist with a specialty in sprawling period dramas that examine crucial moments in American history. This one covers 15 or so years, from the beginning of the Great Depression to the closing days of the Second World War, and features an epic ensemble of characters, both real and imagined. Combined, it paints a dense and fully lived-in portrait of Fordworld as a stand-in for the so-called American dream.
There's the Ford family, of course, including the big man's more empathetic and less ambitious son. There are the Black workers brought in to be scabs when the unions finally rise up against the factories' unjust conditions, with a young Jewish woman helping to spread the word of workers' rights amid the first boom of communist support in America. In South America, the white people flown down to develop Fordlandia find themselves in an uncomfortable partnership with Brazilian locals. There are bootleggers, boxers, journalists, baseball players, and Diego Rivera, and they're all distinct, layered, and familiar.
It's a nervy and ambitious book, a 500-page epic with its feet firmly on the ground. Moreover, it's politically furious. It'll be no surprise to anyone who's seen Sayles's films, especially Matewan, that he leans left and sides firmly with the workers. Crucible is a story of corporate greed and the fiery forces required by the majority to incite change. Solidarity forever.
Shark Heart by Emily Habeck
Loving this one.
— Kayleigh Donaldson (@ceilidhann.bsky.social) July 18, 2026 at 1:28 PM
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Wren loves Lewis. They're the perfect couple: she the shy accountant with a dark past, and he the failed actor who turned his theatrical earnestness towards high school drama classes. They're recently married and planning the rest of their lives together as husband and wife. But then Lewis falls ill. His body is going through some odd changes. The diagnosis: he's turning into a great white shark.
I'm an absolute sucker for stories where people transform into something else, and blending that with a tragic romantic drama was right up my alley. We really don't have enough stories out there like David Cronenberg's The Fly. The first half of Shark Heart is all about the desperation of love in the face of certain doom. Habeck has some suitably gnarly body horror descriptions in there, with a concept she takes 100% seriously. I found myself deeply moved by Wren and Lewis's struggles, as this perennially optimistic guy with a zest for life felt his body betray him, and his mind follow in the same footsteps. The second half shakes things up with a shift in perspective, revealing generational trauma and the reverberations caused by what is essentially chronic illness. Truly, I was riveted for 95% of this book.
That's why it sucked so much when the ending left me feeling so underwhelmed. As often happens with stories so rooted in allegory, it felt as though metaphor and literal could not mesh, and Habeck was left with the conclusion that she wanted to happen despite it no longer making sense in her own narrative. Without getting into spoiler territory, it was an ending that may have been intended as emotionally fulfilling for its protagonist but played as irresponsible within the rules of this world. Still, climax aside, I was thoroughly gripped by Shark Heart and read it in a day, something I haven't done in a while with a novel. It was nice to be engrossed in a story for hours at a time. At least it reignited that spark within.
The Track of the Cat by Nevada Barr
Anna Pigeon doesn't like people much, but she loves the great outdoors. As a park ranger, she's dedicated to preserving the gorgeous wilds of the USA from whoever dares to besmirch them. On one of her regular treks through her current placement in the backcountries of West Texas, she stumbles across the body of a co-worker, ripped to pieces by mountain lions. The cause of death seems obvious, so why can't Anna shake the sense that something more nefarious is afoot?
Anyone who keeps up with our monthly book posts knows that I am an easy mark for a long-running crime series with a unique hook or setting. While nothing has ever scratched the itch that my beloved Three Pines satisfies, I'm always on the lookout for something with that similar blend of cozy and dark. Does Anna Pigeon get there? Not really, but I was intrigued by its striking pessimism. Anna respects nature far more than the humans who pollute it. But it's a tenuous relationship given the ways that the wild will dispose of people without a second glance, and while she doesn't see herself as a freedom fighter, she is virulently against hypocrisy and rich assholes. Her perspective is a fun read, and I can see why the USA Network has decided to build an entire procedural drama around her. The first book in the series is usually the worst one, with the author having to spend their time setting everything up, so I imagine future Anna Pigeon books will expand upon those core ideas. I hope they don't lose the grit.
The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis
Now reading.
— Kayleigh Donaldson (@ceilidhann.bsky.social) July 22, 2026 at 11:26 PM
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Bret Easton Ellis is a bestselling author whose depictions of bored rich kids sinking into nihilistic despair made him the enfant terrible of the '80s and '90s literary scene. Bret Easton Ellis is also the protagonist of The Shards, a 2023 novel by the man himself. In this faux memoir, Ellis writes of his senior year at the prestigious Buckley School. He's one of four, the hottest quartet students that everyone obsesses over, and spends his days watching movies, doing drugs, and having casual sex with some of his male classmates behind his girlfriend's back. Things change when a new student arrives at Buckley, a charismatic and handsome young man named Robert Mallory. Susan, Bret's closest friend, thinks that Robert is electrifying. Bret is convinced he's not who he says he is. What if he's connected to a recent spate of hyper-violent murders committed by someone known as "the Trawler"?
This sort-of prequel-slash-meta examination of Ellis's oeuvre will hit our screens next month in the form of a glossy adaptation by Ryan Murphy. I can see why the king of small screen lasciviousness thought this book of hot teens drinking and screwing on designer sheets in the Hollywood hills was up his alley, but to me, this book reads as kind of unadaptable. It's long, overdetailed, and so thoroughly connected to the roots of Ellis's entire career that divorcing it from that context feels futile. This is a retroactive origin story for Less Than Zero and American Psycho, an explanation of the guy who created them. But it's also a trick, a rewrite of unreliable material from an unreliable narrator. Every character seems to know that they're playing a role in Ellis's puppet show, and young Bret is a terrible director of them all. The addition of a serial killer subplot, one that allows Ellis to indulge all of his visceral excesses, feels like an intrusion upon the core narrative. But it's one the other characters barely notice. Too many drugs, too much malaise, who has time for the real world?
It's a maddening read, but that's the point, right? That's always been Ellis's agenda, to pull back the curtain and reveal that there was nothing behind it the entire time. I've no idea how Ryan Murphy even begins to tackle this. He'll probably just try and turn it into a rip-off of Euphoria.
