Dr. Opal Collins is hanging by a thread. She is a disorganized but compassionate physician who deeply bonds with her patients at Ocean Hospital. Her husband, Fox, a radiologist at a different hospital, wants her to move into a management position so she’ll have more time to spend with their family. Fox wants another child, but Opal secretly stays on birth control. When the president of Doctors Inc., Ronald Aberdeen, announces that their two hospitals are merging, Opal is presented with an opportunity: Aberdeen promises her a promotion, and the two begin an affair (“we both need to want this. There’s so much at stake.”) Unbeknownst to Opal, Aberdeen wants an in with her politician brother-in-law to leverage his return to conducting medical research in New York. As rumors swirl about the allegations in Aberdeen’s past that forced him to leave New York in the first place, and Opal’s personal life becomes increasingly untenable, Opal struggles to find a way to save her marriage and obtain a less compromised work situation. To do so, she needs to confront a dark secret from her own past. This is the compelling story of a messy, complicated woman who is portrayed very empathetically despite her reckless, self-destructive behavior. Threaded through the plot is a sharp critique of the ongoing corporatization of medical care; it’s the most tonally consistent aspect of a story that struggles to weave together dark comedy and more serious subject matter. Opal’s friendship with a motivational speaker who moonlights as a stripper feels tangential, and the narrative’s attempt to redeem Aberdeen at the end rings false after everything he’s done. It’s hard to discern what’s pulling him and Opal together aside from mutual self-interest—they don’t seem to have much of an emotional connection. The inclusion of sexual abuse in Opal’s past and the Covid-19 pandemic bring a lot of weight to a story that seems to strive for a lighter touch.

Elderton, North Carolina may seem like any old small town, but it’s home to Dotty Morgan, a clever paranormal detective. Despite her success as a sleuth, her school life hasn’t exactly gotten easier, as Dotty still faces daily teasing from boys on the basketball team. And even though she’s spent the past year training at the local MMA studio, she’s not much use in a fight; after she and her girlfriend, Hannah, are attacked in the locker room following one of Hannah’s wrestling matches, this reality is thrown into stark relief. The incident leaves the girls shaken, and when strange rumors and shadowy strangers begin to circulate, Dotty’s detective instincts kick into overdrive. Her suspicions are confirmed when a swarm of vampires descends on the town for a sinister gathering known as the Fifty-Year Feast (“This cycle will herald an era of unrivaled strength and prosperity”). The arrival of a vampire hunter adds another wrinkle when Dotty discovers that not all vampires are monsters. Still, she can’t ignore the ones who thirst for blood and power, and with Hannah benched by a sledding injury, Dotty will have to investigate without her usual backup. Helping her along the way is her fashion-obsessed friend Parker, whose style and confidence bring levity and warmth to the bleak, snowbound mystery. The narrative juggles horror, mystery, and moral tension with remarkable grace. Readers will admire Dotty’s courage and vulnerability as she navigates her various relationships and the fine line between good and evil. The pacing never lags as each revelation raises the stakes and forces Dotty to make choices with far-reaching consequences. The novel explores themes of bravery and kindness in an easy-to-follow manner. The vampires are frightening, but the story’s power comes from its acknowledgment of the value of different kinds of abilities, the bonds of friendship and young love, and the hero’s determination to do what’s right, no matter what.

Convinced that the original investigation five years ago got it all wrong, New Zealander Drew Jamieson wants Police Scotland’s Historic Cases Unit to look more closely into the death of his brother, hotel manager Tom Jamieson, whose fatal tumble down Edinburgh’s Scotsman Steps was ruled an accident. Using a computer image search, Drew claims to have identified Tom’s killer as dodgy surgical instruments manufacturer Marcus Nicol. At the same time, a mudslide beneath the M73 motorway reveals the skeleton of freelance investigative journalist Sam Nimmo, who vanished more than 10 years ago after the death of Rachel Morrison, his pregnant fiancée. Assumed then to be her killer, Nimmo’s now revealed as another victim. The two cases couldn’t possibly have any connection—until an examination of Nimmo’s research just before his death reveals that he was working on an accusation of bribery at soccer games by professional gamblers and the rape of an anonymous guest shortly after a high-class party thrown by Lord Haig Striven-Douglass in support of Scottish independence. It turns out that Justified Sinners, the secretive monthly men’s book club Nimmo had joined months before his death, had lost two of its members, including Tom Jamieson, to untimely deaths. Calling on experts of every stripe to help identify and pursue new leads, Karen and her team labor to connect the dots as she waits anxiously to hear whether Rafiq, the Syrian refugee physician she’s come to love, can get a Canadian passport to travel to Scotland.

Being stuck at work on her birthday seems fitting for Nora Bird, whose special day has felt marked by death since the untimely demise of both her parents on the same day 18 years earlier, when she was 8. It’s all the more fitting because Nora’s work is quite literally the work of death. Like a modern spin on the Grim Reaper, Nora’s role involves the Secure Collection, Yielding, Transport, and Handling of Essences, suitably abbreviated to S.C.Y.T.H.E. Nora’s just trying to make the day go by when she gets her latest case: Charles Bird, set to die in a crash at 11:15 a.m. Charles Bird, as in Nora’s twin brother, Charlie. Though it goes against everything she signed up for in her job, Nora dashes over to Charlie to try to protect him from the inevitable, loading him and his newly acquired African gray parrot, Jessica, into the car to hit the road for anywhere-but-here. The only trouble is that neither is sure where to seek refuge, and things stall as they try a few dead-end options while S.C.Y.T.H.E. keeps tracking them down (but how?). Leaving the country seems the only option. Canada’s Virgo Bay, a place their father had old friends—or maybe family—might provide some sort of protection for Charlie while Nora figures out a plan. The path to Virgo Bay is more than a little confusing, but what the twins find there is worth every moment of trouble, and it may lead them to answers for questions they never knew they had about their parents.