A little over three years after he returned in triumph from his epic exploration of the North American West with William Clark Meriwether Lewis was found dead in October 1809 of gunshot wounds at a small inn along the historic Natchez Trace in Tennessee. Ever since historians have debated how he died with most opting for the official explanation that Lewis in a state of “mental derangement” died by suicide—while others insist he was murdered. Turnbow joins the fray with a lucid account of the events leading up to Lewis’ death which he calls “one of the most intriguing and enduring mysteries in American history.” The author devotes much of this volume to Lewis’ activities as a “point man agent or spy” for Thomas Jefferson. He became particularly useful to the president per Turnbow as a source of information about James Wilkinson a rogue U.S. Army general whom he replaced as governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory in 1807 and who had not given up on his own plans “to control the West.” After Lewis set off from St. Louis in September 1809 to defend himself in Washington against critics of his administration the author asserts that Wilkinson “could have anticipated that Lewis would fight him for his own influence and survival.” Another possible enemy of Lewis’ was a “land cabal” in Tennessee that included future president Andrew Jackson (“More than a few could see Lewis as a threat to their interests”). Meticulously researched and documented the book may prove heavy going for those who are not aficionados of the history of the early American Republic. Turnbow doesn’t explicitly state where he stands in the historic debate but he does appear to be siding with the “murderists” noting for example that Clark “never wrote that he believed Lewis committed suicide.”

Teagan is an accountant the mother of an adopted baby and a wife—but when her husband Mike is struck by a car her new identity as a widow supersedes the rest. Luckily Teagan is surrounded by family and friends. Siblings Padrick a police chief and motherly Bridget are supportive though bitter middle sister Colleen shows little sympathy. Work friends Suellen Carol and Lynne try to cheer Teagan up dining in her office when she’s too depressed to make it to the lunchroom. Luke a single dad and police officer who works under Padrick also wants to be a friend. He’s present when Teagan gets the bad news about Mike drives by when she gets cramps while running and needs a ride and answers the call when Teagan needs help with a confused elderly lady she encounters. Luke and Teagan were intimate when they were in high school but Teagan prefers to keep some emotional distance now; Jaden her child is enough to deal with and she’s still grieving Mike. Teagan also doesn’t want to cause gossip in her small town. Nasty anonymous letters arrive in the mail and they seem to be written by someone in her inner circle making Teagan unsure of who to trust. Guarino’s female characters evince a warming sense of solidarity and Teagan’s love for Jaden is sweet—she “laugh[s] tears of happiness” seeing him having fun and will “go to any length for him.” But some compelling avenues of exploration remain unexplored—making Jaden biracial but ignoring the challenges this may present seems like a wasted opportunity while the most complicated character the villainous outlier Colleen is ultimately dismissed as “a classic narcissist.” The setting of Caldwell New Jersey is mostly peripheral but the town’s small size may explain why Luke keeps popping up fortuitously in Teagan’s everyday life. Fans of steamy interludes will find their desires fulfilled as Teagan “swathed in…manliness” experiences “sweetness and anticipation and fire” in several scenes.

Alice Wilson receives an email from her ex-husband Dan announcing that their long-estranged daughter Esme has been arrested (“she doesn’t want to hear from you”). The news cracks open silent years of guilt and longing. A successful environmental financial analyst Alice has lived with the ache of separation since Esme chose to live with her father. His manipulative charm and quiet vindictiveness fractured their family leaving Alice adrift. Determined to uncover what happened she plunges into an emotional investigation contacting the police catching up with Esme’s old friends and confronting her own past actions. The narrative alternates between the present-day search and flashbacks that chart the disintegration of a marriage built on control and fear as well as the mother-daughter bond that faltered under its weight. Themes of parental alienation identity and the long shadow of emotional abuse emerge; Alice’s pursuit of Esme begins as an effort to “rescue” her daughter from the arrest but it gradually becomes a reckoning with her own complicity pride and capacity for forgiveness. By the time Alice and Esme begin to reconnect the author has turned a story of estrangement into one of cautious hope and moral complexity. The novel explores the pain of mother-daughter estrangement with empathy and grounded realism. Hawthorne’s prose is clean and deliberate emphasizing realism over melodrama. Her somewhat journalistic approach ensures that scenes of professional maneuvering regarding matters like green finance push the plot forward. The dual timelines are well managed revealing the family’s history in increments that build emotional tension without resorting to sentimentality. Though the pace occasionally slackens the story’s patient unfolding suits its subject: the slow halting work of understanding another person. The author resists tidy resolutions offering instead a nuanced portrayal of love stretched to its limits. The novel succeeds as both a psychological portrait and a social study treating family estrangement with candor and quiet compassion.

Lazowski was 11 when the Nazis came for him. Separated from his family he found himself lost in Polish forests wandering in brutal winters before war’s end before making it to New York. Now in his mid-90s the rabbi emeritus of two synagogues in Connecticut looks back on a career as counselor to generations of American Jews. This is not just another tale of personal survival though. It is a meditation on the nature of antisemitism itself. It is a history of fear a chronicle of sorrows and success in overcoming hatred. It is as well a book of lessons: People find it easier to hate than to love; anger comes more quickly than acceptance. As Lazowski writes “The idea that Jews are an alien element and as such are potentially harmful to the state goes back millennia.” Pharoah’s ministers suspected Joseph and his family. The history of the Jewish people is a history of diaspora of “joy and despair.” It is this history that Lazowski wants us to know to understand the Jewish penchant for survival. Exile and return have motivated Jewish lives for as long as there have been Jews. Lazowski argues therefore that the answer to antisemitism is an education in Jewish history: “We can arm ourselves with strategic and tactical weapons by using our intelligence education and advocacy efforts.” These days such optimism may seem empty to some. Modern Judaism is so wrapped up with the state of Israel that it is often hard to draw a line between politics and prejudice. Lazowski wants a peaceful Jewish homeland to endure. He’s no apologist for current policies. But he is hopeful for a global coexistence.

“Why didn’t more people resist Nazism?” Berryman is often asked. The author replies that it depends on what one means by resistance. The founder of the Ninth Candle a nonprofit that helps schools improve Holocaust education Berryman writes that not every German under Hitler’s rule had the wherewithal or access to bomb the Führer in his bunker but there were layers of resistance at work all the same ranging from active political resistance to nonconformity refusal and protest. When the Nazis seemed to be out on the fringe in the 1920s Berryman holds “the most persistent of [the] early resisters were the cartoonists who worked for satirical magazines.” That continued until censorship set in; one telling cartoon from 1933 depicts Nazi violence taking place off in the distance while ordinary Germans strolled by blissfully unaware. Just as dangerous was joining “pirate groups” most of them populated by working-class youngsters who didn’t attend school but who were too young for military service and who “all…rejected the Nazis.” Some even distinguished themselves by listening to forbidden jazz music. From prison camp revolts to ghetto uprisings and partisan warfare some resistance took deadlier form. Berryman also includes the wartime experience of a Black American soldier Leon Bass who helped liberate Buchenwald and returned to the U.S. committed to the cause of civil rights saying “Nazism in Germany is the other side of racism and Jim Crow segregation.” Pointedly Berryman extends his series of profiles to the present given the resurgence of nationalist and white supremacist movements throughout the West: Not all are Nazis strictly defined he notes but there are “enough points of overlap to give the stories in this book fresh relevance.”

Davies’ long-running series delightfully inverts Arthur Conan Doyle’s focus as Sherlock Holmes plays supporting character to a successful investigation by his observant landlady Mrs. Hudson that largely passes beneath his notice. Taking the Watson role of sidekick and narrator is scrappy teenage maid Flotsam whose voice combines period formality youthful snark and as much insight into her mentor as the faithful doctor had into Holmes. The victim in Mrs. Hudson’s eighth case is arms dealer Charles Belladonna whose death is originally ruled accidental. The plot is thickened by the inheritance of the title. The beneficiary is son Paul left on the industrialist’s doorstep as an infant more than 20 years ago current location unknown. Holmes and Watson are far from insignificant characters. Their highbrow conjectures on the case play drolly against Mrs. Hudson’s more conversationally delivered deductions. Holmesians will take pleasure in the many references to characters and places from the original stories as Davies expands rather than contradicts Doyle’s world. Although the labyrinthine course of the plot can be confusing the tale is kept afloat by the delicious character portraits of numerous people of interest whose juicy names—Mrs. Beer Old Rudge Mr. Rumbelow—often sound more like Dickens than Doyle. A handful of characters are based on real people whose histories are unpacked in a concluding historical note.

Reminiscent of Langston Hughes’ The Negro Speaks of Rivers illustrated by E.B. Lewis (2009) this elegantly wrought first-person telling is both human and natural history. Lines from Negro spirituals that sing of rivers like “Wade in the Water” appear between Weatherford’s stanzas in a scriptlike font. The Alabama describes its size (“318 miles long fifty to 200 yards wide / and from three to forty feet deep”) and notes that its Choctaw name means “Thicket Clearers.” It also recalls enslaved Africans hiding in its waters as they sought freedom and the Cherokee people who passed its banks on the Trail of Tears. Throughout Collier’s signature collage illustrations add richness depth hope and light to the river’s weighty story. Weatherford never flinches from the horrors of oppression: victims of lynching thrown into the river civil rights protesters beaten as they made their way across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7 1965. But Collier’s paintings emphasize Black and Native Americans’ determination to survive and triumph. The inclusion of blue spheres—a motif that pops up in many of the illustrator’s works—suggests that the downtrodden like air bubbles will rise. Weatherford’s extensive historical timeline will give budding historians much to consider and research further.

If you keep upping your protagonist’s powers throughout a series then you must balance the scales by increasing the number and strength of their enemies—as well as seriously messing with their personal life. Over the course of the Dresden Files Harry Dresden Chicago PI and now one of the most powerful wizards in the world thought his first love was dead (she wasn’t) sacrificed his half-vampire girlfriend on an altar to save their child lost another girlfriend when they learned she’d been mind-controlled into their relationship bound himself into servitude as the Fae Queen Mab’s Winter Knight and for the length of an entire book thought he himself was dead (he wasn’t). But nothing has hit quite as hard as the death of Karrin Murphy the former police lieutenant who was his quasi-partner friend and after a slow burn across many books lover. Chicago is in a terrible state following a battle with Ethniu the Titan and her Fomor army and Harry is doing his best to confront the monsters dark magic and anti-supernatural prejudice running wild amid the slowly rebuilding city. He’s also trying to save his half brother Thomas from two different death sentences train a new apprentice and juggle a relationship with Thomas’s half sister Lara the dangerously seductive vampire Queen Mab is forcing him to marry. But he’s doing all this while nearly crushed by grief that threatens his judgment and disturbs his control over his magical powers. Butcher really makes you feel the dark depressive state Harry exists in as well as the effect it’s having on his friends. Despite all that happens in it this book is a pause as well as a setup for the series’ planned conclusion an epic conflict with the eldritch creatures known as “the Outsiders.” It’s a tough redemptive pause that could be a real drag but thankfully it’s not because Butcher shows balance too: Even as the crises pile up so do the help and goodwill from unexpected sources.

“We are ALL gifted. / Each one of us has treasures within.” So begins the authors’ paraphrasing of a message from Pope Francis printed in full on the previous page. An accompanying illustration depicts a large diverse group of children of different ages including one wheelchair user all gathered as if onstage ready to share their talents. A detailing of different types of gifts follows distinguishing between common creative outlets (music art literature) and less heralded talents with social benefits (listening to others being kind offering love). Finally the text urges kids not to keep their “light” to themselves but to give it freely to foster happiness: “So…what are your gifts and how will you share them? / The world is waiting.” This is a heartfelt work and Peter H. Reynolds presents single-page and occasionally double-page illustrations of children discovering their gifts which are often in magic-filled boxes. These scenes are vividly enacted against cloudy backdrops in all the vibrant shades of the rainbow. Although the linework is simple the characters spring to life with a joy and vivacity reminiscent of Quentin Blake’s work.

Reid grew up in a crossroads hamlet in southern Nevada where not much happened his father a taciturn hard-rock miner who took to drink his father figure a brothel keeper who taught him a valuable lesson early in life: “You’ve got a future ahead of you. Always be honest in everything you do.” Reid took the lesson well although as Nevada journalist and sometime antagonist Ralston notes he had a few quirks including a penchant for vindictive politics telling a staffer “vengeance is in my soul.” After rising through local politics including a stint on Nevada’s influential all-powerful gaming commission Reid was elected to Congress and began a steady climb to power albeit with a few setbacks as when he broke with Democratic Party leaders to support Al Gore over Michael Dukakis. Reid also formulated strategies for building big-tent coalitions in states such as Nevada where the voters might favor a Republican candidate but would often vote for Democratic candidates down the ticket even if the polity didn’t always appreciate Reid’s legislative accomplishments—for one forging a water compact in his arid state that was hailed as “an accomplishment that remains amazing to this day.” By Ralston’s account Reid was unhurried deliberate and persuasive in his dealmaking. He voted against the confirmation of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court a politically risky move; the upshot though on reaching the pinnacle of power in the Senate was to have a big say in judicial appointments which he insisted be made more diverse than the usual white men. (He also had a knack for disarming political opponents by appointing them to the bench.) Ralston’s biography capably proves what Reid’s House counterpart John Boehner said of him: “he was one tough son of a bitch.”

Ani Avakian quit her job to follow her dream of becoming the Bay Area’s most successful Armenian wedding planner but her career is off to a rocky start. With overdraft fees looming she agrees to take on the wedding of an up-and-coming indie movie star Grace who’d already lined up an Armenian-owned winery as the venue. At first Ani is excited to work with someone who shares her heritage but she and the winery’s owner Raffi Garabedian get off on the wrong foot. Ani’s heard stories about Raffi’s reputation as a love ’em and leave ’em type while Raffi is too tongue-tied to address her preconceived notions. Then Ani’s in for shock when it turns out that Grace’s fiancée is Kami the woman who broke her heart two years ago and that’s not even the worst part. Apparently Ani’s ex-girlfriend Kami is also Raffi’s ex-girlfriend Kami. Wedding planner and winery owner are beyond surprised to discover they have similar tastes in women but there’s no time to be rattled about the revelation because they need to work together to make sure this wedding goes off without a hitch. That means having meetings about where to hold the ceremony where to install the fountain Kami wants what flowers to use to capture the color scheme you name it. The more time Ani and Raffi are forced to spend in each other’s company the more they suspect the tension between them is rooted in something more complicated than mere dislike but they’ll have to prioritize professionalism over personal feelings to give their ex the wedding of her dreams. Voskuni returns to the same winning blend of humor romance and culture that made her debut Sorry Bro (2023) so unputdownable and her latest feels like a natural evolution of all her best traits as a writer. With sparkling chemistry plenty of nods to classic rom-coms and a welcome dose of spice the end result is a slow-burn love story that heats up at the perfect moment.

When the ailing emperor of Tensha names Terren his second son as his heir a search begins for young women to serve as concubines. Despite reports of Terren’s sadism Yin Wei the 16-year-old daughter of a rice farmer presents herself as a candidate hoping to secure gifts for her famine-ravaged village and a chance for her younger brother to go to school. When the court’s representative dismisses her as a joke she responds “Then let the prince laugh.” Her plea works—and reveals the quick wit and strength of character that ensures her survival in a court where no one can be trusted. After Terren selects Wei to be his Empress-in-Waiting he regularly subjects her to violence including that of his magic blades. Fearing for the future of Tensha under his erratic tyranny Wei determines to compose a heart-spirit poem which if used at the right moment could kill him. Doing so requires Wei not only to learn literomancy—writing poems with the power of spells—in a world where literacy for women is criminal but also to become deeply familiar with Terren and thus able to find the words to strike directly at his heart. The story of his past is grotesque and reveals the way that wrangling for dynastic power destroys families and brings ruin upon a nation; but Terren’s dark history is less compelling than Wei’s steadfast pursuit of it. Resilient and clever Wei is the heart of the novel striving to navigate a world of lies and cruelty without becoming cruel herself. She learns to wield power with fidelity to her purpose and though the novel’s title alludes to her triumph the story is full of page-turning suspense.

As longtime Corriere della Sera editor Mian writes the 2000-mile-long Volga river has long played a central role in Russians’ sense of national identity past. It does so today in Vladimir Putin’s world where Russkiy mir is “not a philosophy but a creed encompassing everything pertaining to Great Russia where Orthodox Christianity Fascist impulses traditionalism and a certain ‘Asiatic’ Soviet despotism coexist.” Traveling from town to town and city to city along the Volga Mian with photographer Cosmelli teases out several related themes. One is the Russian people’s self-professed indifference to death. At the site of one vast World War II battle overshadowed by that of Stalingrad a local historian reckons that the fight consumed “eighty-five tons of human flesh.” She asks meaningfully “Who else would give their lives for their country like that?” And that she suggests is what will restore Russian greatness a motif sounded by young and old alike. Yet Mian points out Russian greatness seems a far distant possibility in so many places along the great river where drugs alcohol despair and roving Clockwork Orange–ish youth gangs rule and where death is everywhere: not just the incalculable deaths in battle in Ukraine but also death by vodka car crashes (with death rates a staggering 60 times higher than in Britain) suicide and industrial pollution in a heartland “where smokestacks apartment blocks daycares warehouses and churches exist together along the Volga in a suffocating cloud of ammonia.” It’s not a pretty picture nor is the overall view of life under Putin’s rule where dissidents gay men and women and minorities are oppressed where right-wing Christianity dominates and where one priest confides no one seems especially afraid of being incinerated in an atomic war.

At Juniper’s school in the city bullies—seen in the shadows but apparently white—taunt the young girl. On a day devoted to celebrating students’ heritage they tell her she doesn’t know where she comes from. Juniper’s mojo bag tucked in her pocket doesn’t keep the bullies at bay. But soon enough she packs up empty mason jars and travels to Grandma’s house down South. During “rootwork summer” Grandma teaches Juniper about the wisdom their ancestors brought from Africa when “white folks stole us and caged us on boats set for America.” Grandma explains that these newly arrived Africans sought wisdom from their own ancestors “[weaving] the magick of home deep into their bones” as they harvested tree sap and gathered mushrooms. As Juniper learns about these practices—known as hoodoo—and the powers of different plants she adds bits of items to her mojo bag and fills her jars with herbs. And when she returns home in August she feels ready to face the bullies armed with the knowledge of who she is. McBride’s shimmering prose (Grandma’s home is “like a ship sailing in a sea of herbs”) immerses readers in Juniper’s experience while Encarnación’s illustrations make powerful use of light and shadow to redefine what glows. Their perspective on the Black diaspora brings something truly new to children’s literature.

Seventeen-year-old Waldo the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut lives in Anchorage Alaska with her mother though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy her creative writing teacher has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022) will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship and it is one of the novel’s highlights full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.

He’s indebted to the Devil and must do him 666 favors before he can earn his soul back. For his last favor all Callum is expected to do is escort an unsuspecting human named Auggie from London to New York. Callum embarks on his journey accompanied by his irate cat Narcissa and Therese a young girl from the village whom he accidentally turned into a frog. Callum and his small party face attacks along the way—but Callum also makes friends for the first time in his life. And Auggie is different; Callum falls deeper in love with him as the slow-burn story progresses. Unfortunately the light worldbuilding and characters’ simplicity make this witchy tale lukewarm at best. Passive language makes the plot lack urgency and the story feel overly long in the lead-up to an anticlimactic though happy ending. Golems appear—Callum uses one as his potion shop clerk and the Ember King has henchmen who are golems—but there’s no mention of the Jewish folklore surrounding the myth of the golem and the fabled creatures are used as little more than plot devices. Main characters read white.

Independent scholar Sankovitch recounts the unlikely history of Jemima Wilkinson (1753-1819) a Rhode Island woman who claimed to have died and been reborn as a genderless messenger from God: Universal Friend. Raised in a Quaker home Jemima became swept up in the religious revival movement of the 1770s and the excitement of colonial patriotism. Then in 1776 she suddenly fell deathly ill only to awaken one morning dramatically transformed. She had been visited by angels she said and now her body was a vessel anointed to “carry God’s message of universal redemption” to lost souls. Rejecting identification as a male or female and taking a new name Universal Friend became a nonbinary minister intent on creating “a practical functioning utopia” where equality opportunity and individual enrichment would be the guiding values. Into a world of danger and dissent Friend went forth wearing a long dark robe over a silk skirt with a white or purple cravat around the neck to preach a gospel of salvation. The world was dying Friend announced and each person must seek redemption and work for peace; instead of taking up arms “piety and faith should lead to reconciliation.” Friend’s message resonated with merchants and tradesmen teachers and farmers some offering Friend lodging and financial support. Wherever Friend made a home it was turned into a community where chores were shared and each individual was respected. Friend’s ministry extended to Pennsylvania New England and finally the nation’s western frontier in New York state where the Society of Universal Friends worked to establish a viable community. Sankovitch reveals the trials and challenges that Friend strived to overcome including scandals betrayals fraud and greed—and the perseverance that led to the success though brief of their Jerusalem.

In a condensation aimed at the general reader of a much longer and more technical report on the economic impact of biodiversity British economist Dasgupta makes the case that economists in general have been ignoring what he calls “natural capital” in favor of the more historically accepted measures of produced capital and human capital. By “natural capital” Dasgupta means “ecosystems and their constituents” and he points out that investment in natural capital is very different from what we usually mean by investment: It often means allowing ecosystems to rest and regenerate; and not allowing this to take place necessarily results in an ongoing degradation of natural capital. Over the course of the book the author concisely considers the economic impact of species extinction the difficulty of dealing with exploitation of the ocean and the importance of acting locally. While those who aren’t fluent in the language and mathematics of economics may find some of the volume hard going with its graphs and formulas and its prose dry the author does come down to earth with concrete examples such as considering the impact of mangrove forests or measuring the effects of a shrimp farming operation. Though Dasgupta does present a few tentative solutions to the problem of the increasing loss and degradation of natural capital—lowering future global human population and per capita GDP reducing the production of goods and raising the rate of regeneration of the biosphere—his primary emphasis is on laying out a pressing problem in terms that can’t be brushed off noting bluntly and undramatically that “we need 1.7 Earths to meet humanity’s current demand on a sustainable basis.”

Nellie Andersen is counting the days until she can leave Longview Texas. She may be the daughter of one of the wealthiest families but she’s been all but shunned by her peers mostly because of her propensity for violence when she doesn’t get her way. Then Jane Swift moves to town with her family: handsome dad Ethan who builds custom furniture; earthy trad wife Abigail who sells love potions and offers workshops about the divine feminine; and two boring sisters. Jane is attractive and looking to push beyond the boundaries imposed upon her; she’s also dreaming of bad boy boyfriend Luke whom she left behind. Nellie hates Jane on sight and her mother Charleigh who grew up poor but is now one of the richest most beautiful women in town wants Abigail out. Then there’s Jackson Ford who walks the uneasy line between being Charleigh’s best friend but also an employee and who discovers that there may be more to hunky Ethan’s story than he suggests. Cobb begins at the end: A body floats in the water not sinking fast enough for the person who put it there. Other than occasional cuts to this moment the novel shows us how we get here and who is dead—and who is responsible. This is not an unusual structure for a modern thriller nor is the use of multiple narrative perspectives but Cobb builds in more complexity than is sometimes the case. Every character inhabits a moral gray area stuck and struggling with secret desires resentments and plans. Cobb may claim Little House on the Prairie as an inspiration—but this is more Desperate Housewives.

Gabby Greene is still figuring out what her life looks like. As a divorcee mother of two and fledgling spy it’s hard to find the balance between intense espionage work and remembering to pack school lunches. There’s also the fact that her ex is keen on reconciliation while Gabby is actively navigating her feelings for her handsome handler Markus. But when the two colleagues are given their next assignment Gabby realizes she’s about to be more up close and personal with Markus than she’d anticipated. Their mission is to infiltrate a mysterious couples retreat while faking their own engagement as a believable cover. Their attraction is already mutual but during this assignment they’ll have to sell a pretend relationship from wedding planning to sharing the same hotel room. Will Gabby and Markus even have time to define their own relationship while they’re faking a deeper one or will their mission have to take priority over their personal connection? Tschida’s latest rom-com mystery is the second in a series about Gabby’s adventures following Errands & Espionage (2024) but new readers can jump in thanks to a pairing of clever exposition and just the right amount of setup before the mission gets going. The book also succeeds at both sides of its genre mash-up blending romance into a mystery that’s engaging without taking itself too seriously. When other characters including Gabby’s rowdy family crash the party the narrative does become slightly overwhelmed with moving pieces and the investigation isn’t quite as satisfying as Gabby’s romantic ups and downs but this is a promising installment in a series that could continue for many more books to come.