The author was raised in Lamesa, in the endless flat plains of West Texas. He describes himself as a typical, hard-working kid. As a teenager, he discovered a talent for broadcasting as a DJ on local radio and honed his skills through his college years at the University of Texas at Austin, after which he decided to pursue the law. Conner went to law school in Houston, where he met and married Anne Garwood, a socialite from a prominent family (“Anne and I met for drinks. Two nights later, we had our second date. Within a few days, we were together constantly”). They welcomed two kids, Emily and Will, who have both become very successful (Emily’s accomplishments are particularly impressive, as she was rendered paralyzed in a diving accident). Retired, the author and Anne now live in New Mexico. The book’s highlights find Conner in the courtroom: In the very first chapter, the author discusses his role in the true case of a legendary Texas wildcatter, Hugh Roy Cullen, detailing the troubles that beset his family over the decades, including a grandson who claimed to be Italian aristocracy, conservatorship battles, Roy Cohn (yes, that Roy Cohn), and some of the most renowned and flamboyant lawyers in Texas (which is saying a lot). This is a shrewd tactic to draw the reader in.

The author evinces a commendable but almost unseemly modesty regarding himself; clearly, he played in the big leagues, even if he never gained the fame of a Gerry Spence or an F. Lee Bailey—which again speaks to his modesty. He was never a grandstander, but his opponents knew that when they faced Conner in court, they had better have done their homework. The other cases covered here are ones that often made the national news and the tabloids, such as the murder case involving millionaire Cullen Davis and his estranged wife, the high-living Priscilla Davis, whom, per the author, shot her. Davis was acquitted (“After the trial, one of the prosecutors said, ‘I never thought I would say this, but it seems we have two systems of justice in this country: one for the rich and one for the poor’”), later found religion, lost his riches, and lived modestly. Priscilla was made very rich in the ensuing divorce settlement, which was handled by Conner, who tried to steer her to responsible financial planners. Against his advice, she went with scammers who promised her quick riches; she wound up dying at 59 of breast cancer in a one-bedroom apartment in Dallas. Other engaging stories include a murder case in the Conner’s own River Oaks neighborhood, medical malpractice fraud (the author had a good team of detectives), and a thwarted kidnapping. Readers learn a lot about legal procedure. Conner is a competent if not striking writer, adequately equipped to do justice to the amazing stories he has to tell. Moreover, he comes across as a very decent and ethical human being.

The story begins in South Carolina in 1859, when 16-year-old Lorena McKenzie, already a stunning beauty, meets handsome West Point cadet Baron Callahan at the ball that opens her family’s annual horse sale. The story then jumps forward two years: Lorena’s overbearing, histrionic mother has moved to Baltimore; Baron is with his army unit in Texas; and her beloved father dies, leaving her in charge of the horse farm along with a second farm in Virginia, where she’s started a girls’ boarding school. She soon discovers that her father has left the property in debt, and unscrupulous bankers force the heartbreaking sale of his legacy. With the war between the states imminent, Baron resigns his commission to join the Confederate forces and Lorena is recruited as a spy. Her code name is Rain Crow, a southern nickname for the yellow-billed cuckoo whose cries often presage summer storms. Packing a pistol under her gowns, she flirts with Union officers while conveying secret messages, worries about Baron’s safety, evades capture, is stalked by a possible serial killer, and volunteers at a hospital for wounded soldiers. At first a wayward child, she blossoms into a savvy, compassionate, and daring young woman. Weathers’ 600-page tome is packed with enough characters and plot elements for two or three standard novels. Her writing is often vivid but sometimes uneven; items such as clothing and food are described with colorful, accurate historical detail, but the dialogue often features expressions that feel anachronistic (such as “snagged” for “obtained” and “comprende?”) and occasional plantation dialect. The treatment of slavery is ambivalent; it’s not always clear which servants are free (and of course, the protagonists are on the rebel side). Lorena’s voice is distinctive—she’s aware of her own beauty without being vain, capable of both sarcasm and tenderness, determined, and cool under pressure. The ending is satisfying but open-ended enough to permit a sequel.

When three boys, Ricky Henderson and brothers Mikey and Joey Schuler, vanish in 1950s Chicago and are later found dead in a nearby forest preserve, the city is thrown into a state of panic. A massive manhunt ensues, drawing in police from multiple jurisdictions. Despite sweeping up dozens of known pedophiles and other potential suspects, authorities fail to find the killer. The investigation is hampered by chaos at the crime scene, jurisdictional conflicts, and a flood of false leads, and the murders go unsolved for decades. Almost 40 years later, ATF investigator Nick Ferraro, who had known the victims as a child, stumbles upon an unexpected lead—a long-buried confession overheard by a criminal informant (“He told me he killed a couple of kids one time”). Teaming up with police officer A.J. Reid, the daughter of one of the original investigating officers, Nick begins to unravel a web of corruption and criminal ties that reach far beyond the boys’ murders. As the pair dig deeper, they discover connections to the so-called “Equestrian Mafia” and the shadowy world of Chicago’s organized crime. Readers fascinated by true-crime investigations and procedural detail will find much to engage with here. The novel excels in its depiction of midcentury police work and the ensuing media frenzy. The later sections, in which Nick and A.J. piece together decades-old clues, are equally compelling, offering both emotional weight and historical resonance. That said, what begins as a breathless, sharply paced thriller loses momentum—the minutiae of the original investigation can drag, and the courtroom sequences toward the end feel unnecessarily drawn out, dulling some of the tension built earlier in the book. Still, despite its pacing issues, the novel delivers an engrossing blend of crime, history, and moral reckoning.

Back in the 1980s, Lenya Fischer served as an intelligence officer for the Stasi, where her attributes—“sneaky, stealthy, a deep-diver”—earned her the nickname Der Narwhal. Now, after a stint in prison for bribery, the 63-year-old is back on the street working as one of Europe’s most tenacious corporate investigators for hire. Her current case has her looking into the activities of Peter Brunner, the scion of a lumber empire who seems to be hiding something in his Cyprus-, Malta-, and Liechtenstein-based shell companies. It won’t be an easy job: “The Brunners have been a kind of power behind the throne all across Europe since the Holy Roman Empire,” a friend warns her. “They didn’t stay on top through two world wars by being nice. They don’t like to be investigated.” Luckily, Lenya is one of the only people in the world with access to the perfect man to probe Brunner’s holdings: Orell Schneider, the so-called “007 of Money Laundering” (and Lenya’s ex-lover) whose past employers include Liechtenstein’s Financial Intelligence Unit and the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority. When Orell is killed in a car bombing just days after Lenya tries to make contact, she knows she’s being sent a warning—if Orell’s death wasn’t clear enough, the killers also take the liberty of murdering Lenya’s cat, Fritz. Perhaps the Brunners don’t like to be investigated, but Lenya is not the sort of woman to back down once blood has been spilled. “Whoever did this was a ghost trying not to see the Grim Reaper,” she fumes. (“Lenya would hang on to the bottom of a car for a thousand miles to…watch the soul leave their eyes.”) Her investigation soon reconnects her with an East Texas spy she crossed swords with during the Lebanese Civil War, as well as a cavalcade of Russian mobsters, Corsican gun-runners, and other European ne’er-do-wells who stand between her and an international conspiracy the size of a continent.

In addition to the engaging revenge plot—which is more about avenging Fritz the cat than Orell—Nichols keeps his readers entertained with an endless supply of pseudonymous spies and criminal organizations. (For example: the Black Jackals, “founded by former Serbian special ops commandos who reinvented themselves as a gang of highly sophisticated international jewel thieves after the Balkans War in the Nineties.”) Lenya is a brilliant protagonist, a Russophile and true-believer who once reported her own husband for treason (he was executed) and who now finds herself doing the bidding of some of the world’s grossest capitalists. Nichols manages to pack the last 50 years of European conflict and interconnection into her personal history, illustrating how money and those who possess it circulate heedless of national borders. As the story unfolds, the vision of our tenuous global economy and democratic order that emerges is more terrifying than anything hidden in a Liechtenstein bank. Readers will undoubtedly look forward to Lenya’s next case.

Initially, Cathcart’s novel seems to follow a familiar beat: a young man named Scoot mourns his departed friend, Hannah. Both have been living with cystic fibrosis; in the aftermath of Hannah’s death, Scoot finds that Hannah has left him money and a detailed request. It’s that request that lead things in a strange direction: Hannah’s wishes involve Scoot traveling to Europe to find the preserved heart of the composer and pianist Chopin. (That isn’t as random as it seems: several characters remark on parallels between Chopin’s tuberculosis and the cystic fibrosis that afflicts Hannah and Scoot.) The journey takes him to Tbilisi, Georgia, and involves Niki, a woman with her own connection to Hannah. Gradually, the boundaries of the novel expand even further, to include several chapters narrated by the late novelist George Sand. Cathcart moves backward and forward in time, filling in details about Scoot and Hannah’s relationship, Scoot’s troubled family history, and how precisely Niki fits into the narrative. There’s also the matter of Hannah’s desire for posthumous revenge on the sinister Dr. Owning and the supernatural Haint pursuing Scoot. A madcap energy keeps much of the story going, but there’s also a lot of plot happening here, including an allusion to the many crimes of Soviet secret police head Lavrentiy Beria, an organization called the Oulipo that seems distinct from the literary organization Georges Perec belonged to, and a subplot involving performance artist and cystic fibrosis patient Bob Flanagan. It’s tremendously ambitious, but it also sometimes loses sight of the human connections at its heart.