The heroine of Perrotta's Election returns in this sharp and perfectly executed story of frustrated ambition. Having failed to achieve her youthful career goals, Tracy Flick, now in her mid-40s, is an assistant principal at a New Jersey high school and single mother to 11-year-old Sophia. Though beaten down a little by life, Tracy still harbors ambition and remains determined to reach her goals, and she desperately wants to be voted her school's next principal. To that end, she attaches herself to a tech millionaire's dubious scheme to create a Hall of Fame for the school. The number one choice for its first inductee--though not without controversy--is former football hero Vito Falcone, who has also not lived up to the promise of his glory days. He is currently divorced, in AA, and possibly suffering from CTE. As the Hall of Fame selection committee's debate over who should receive the honor highlights class and race schisms in the high school, an unexpected act of violence alters the course of several lives. As ever, Perrotta writes incisively from several different points of view, illuminating the frustrated inner lives of his characters; call it Winesburg, N.J. Dominating it all is Tracy, whom the reader comes to understand better even through her cringeworthy machinations. This is the rare sequel that lives up to the original. (May)

Tracy Flick is all grown up now. Although she never realized her dream of becoming the president of the United States, she is the assistant principal of a suburban New Jersey high school, and that's pretty much the same thing, right? Just kidding. But now Tracy does have a chance of securing the top spot at Green Meadow High School, since Principal Jack Weede is retiring. She should be a shoo-in, but during an ill-considered pre-interview cocktail hour with school board president Kyle Dorfman, a Tesla-driving tech titan, Tracy blithely agrees to support his idea of creating a Green Meadow "Hall of Fame" to honor worthy alumni, staff, and students. It turns out to be a disastrous, even fatal, mistake. In this culturally savvy sequel to his enduring best-seller, Election (1998), and its wildly popular film adaptation starring Reese Witherspoon, Perrotta again tells a smart, entertaining story from multiple perspectives, oral-history style. The breeziness of the pacing provides tart counterpoint to weightier themes of adultery, ambition, atonement, and revenge which Perrotta handles with a deft but determined satiric touch.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With a "she's back" publicity campaign calling all Perrotta and Witherspoon fans, this will be a much-requested early summer read.

The campaign to create a Hall of Fame at a suburban New Jersey high school lures a few skeletons out of their closets. Perrotta's 10th novel, following the delightful Mrs. Fletcher (2017), revives the now-iconic protagonist of his third, Election (1998). Tracy Flick, portrayed so unforgettably by Reese Witherspoon in the movie, is not only back, she's still in high school--now as Dr. Flick, assistant principal in another New Jersey town. Combining narrated chapters with short first-person "testimonies" by five of the characters, the plot unfolds with the you-are-there feel of a documentary, or mockumentary perhaps, though the generally arch tone is belied by a not-so-funny ending. As the story begins, Tracy is at the breakfast table with her 10-year-old daughter, reading the paper. The connection between the #MeToo headlines and her own past (she's always thought of what happened with her sophomore English teacher as an "affair") is perturbing. Her once-unshakeable belief in her own agency has been almost fatally challenged since then, shoving her off her track to the presidency of the United States (not "a crazy ambition," according to her), now offering as booby prize the possibility of taking over for the principal when he retires at the end of the year. But in the meantime, she has to deal with this stupid Hall of Fame project, which pushes many of her buttons. Once again, characters you shouldn't like at all become strangely sympathetic in Perrotta's hands. Adulterers, egotists, bullies--well, we all make mistakes. As much as forgiveness seems the explicit theme of the book, its evil twin, revenge, burbles menacingly beneath the surface, and the ending is a shocker. Nobody told this master of dark comedy there are things you can't make jokes about. Watch him try. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.