NOT THEY WHO SOAR (Katharine Wright #2) by Amanda Flower will be released on May 27, 2025, by Kensington Books.
Katharine Wright, the younger sister of Wilber and Orville Wright, leaves her family home in Ohio to spend the summer at the St. Louis Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri with an old friend from college. Katharine is barely off the train when she runs into trouble when a young woman literally runs into her at the station. After asking Katharine for help, the woman flees the station. Katharine catches glimpses of the woman around the exposition—including around the hangers at the aeronautics area. She finally catches up to the woman, but it is too late to help her. The woman had just been stabbed and proceeds to die in Katharine’s arms. Despite her friend’s insistence that she let the police handle the murder investigation, Katharine searches the exposition for the killer.
NOT THEY WHO SOAR is a strong follow up to the first Katharine Wright novel, TO SLIP THE BONDS OF EARTH. Katharine is a strong, likeable character. She’s a modern woman ahead of her time—an intrepid feminist who isn’t afraid to step out of the typical role of a woman in the early 1900s. The St. Louis Exposition was a unique setting. While Katharine only visits certain parts of the grounds, the reader gets glimpses of the good, the bad, and the ugly of the event and the time period. There is also plenty of information about her brothers and their flying machine woven into the story. I highly recommend this series to anyone who enjoys historical fiction. The mystery is compelling, and there are plenty of suspects and red herrings. I was kept guessing until the end.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.