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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.