Chief Inspector Yiannis Patronas embodies the contradictions of modern Greece. He mourns his country’s culturally vibrant and racially homogeneous past while rejecting the racist, anti-immigrant sentiments of his community. When a Syrian woman is discovered with her throat slit, Patronas’ investigation penetrates a dark network of human traffickers operating around Chios’ large refugee camp. Despite pressure from his superiors, who consider the deaths of immigrants insignificant, Patronas is dogged in his pursuit of justice. His investigation leads him through the island’s stark contrasts and into increasingly dangerous territory as he uncovers the systematic exploitation of desperate refugees. The setting serves as both character and backdrop. The island’s idyllic beauty—its “miraculous light and endless sea”—is skillfully juxtaposed against the appalling poverty and degradation of the camp. Serafim’s protagonist, Patronas, emerges as a compelling figure whose internal contradictions feel authentic and whose noble but begrudging determination makes him an effective noir hero. His cynicism is balanced with a romantic side that reveals his ambivalent attitude toward Greece’s complex social and political landscape. His investigation unfolds at a brisk, engaging pace that propels readers forward, though seasoned mystery readers will likely anticipate several plot developments before they occur. (The twists and turns of the story include extremely violent and disturbing episodes, which are justified by the narrative but may upset some readers.) Supporting characters—namely, a gluttonous priest and an alcoholic but courageous officer—enrich the narrative, providing both comic relief and emotional depth. There are some structural weaknesses: The relationship between Patronas’ gritty investigative work and the more sentimental aspects of his family life creates tonal inconsistencies that occasionally dilute the story’s noirish atmosphere. Nonetheless, the book remains an engaging and thought-provoking read.

In the East Village in New York City, a man steals a french fry, gets into a fist fight, takes drugs, and has a depraved tryst with a sex worker behind a dumpster—all in the first few pages of this debaucherous satirical comedy. Rusty, a sex-addicted man with erectile dysfunction, spends his days (and nights) pursuing demeaning, degrading sex. After a particularly haunting night spent debasing a woman named Sonya, Rusty decides to respond to an advertisement that promises to cure his erectile dysfunction. When he goes in for treatment, however, Rusty finds that the ad was actually a cover for a secretive and fantastical group called the Wormhole Society, “a secret society that uses wormholes to change people.” Availing one’s self of the wormholes comes with two risks: “losing the self and ending up lost in time.” With nothing to lose, Rusty thrusts himself through a portal (cleverly disguised as a sandwich board inside his favorite local restaurant) and hurtles through time and space. Somewhere in between masturbating in a crowded elevator on 9/11, having animalistic sex with Lucy, the first known human on Earth, and experiencing an orgasm as nothing but a subatomic particle in the Big Bang, Rusty begins to question who he is and how he can be a better man. (He also wonders if “doctors [he] saw in the parallel universe [would] be considered out-of-network.”) Via blunt, sharp prose and rough dialogue (“‘I wanted a ladyboy, but if you’re into extreme humiliation you can stay,’ I slurred as I cracked a popper and felt a wave of warmth surging through my body”), Levy creates characters both deplorable and engaging. Throughout Rusty’s obscene and otherworldly journey, the author boldly tackles topics including human nature, self-worth, and relationships at their ugliest. Not for the faint of heart, this dark comedy is “terminally unique”—and wholly compelling.

In his debut memoir, the author, a former Arizona state representative, recounts the highlights and low points of an eventful life, including his wife Rhonda’s battle with breast cancer and his own nightmarish experience with Covid-19. Sierra describes himself as a classic “retail politician,” someone who regularly cuts ribbons or appears in parades. “I like getting to know people,” he writes, “shaking hands, and giving hugs.” He asserts that his wife was an invaluable help in “cultivating” his finer qualities. “I’m not saying it was an Eliza Doolittle scenario,” he quips, referring to My Fair Lady, “but it was pretty much an Eliza Doolittle scenario.” His wife had fought cancer and won a few years ago, and everything looked rosy for the future when the fateful year 2020 came along. Suddenly, all of the good feelings and the upward trajectory of Sierra’s burgeoning career in Arizona politics came to a sudden halt. “I know I’m not the only person to have that experience in March 2020,” he recalls, “and it sucked for all of us.” In a statement that garnered national attention at the time, Sierra observed of the pandemic, “This enemy has no lands to invade, no ideology to defeat.” In the book’s dramatic high point, that enemy strikes Sierra severely: He tested positive for the virus and soon found himself on a ventilator. He writes about love, heartbreak, national events (like the pandemic and the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg), and even his nerdy love of Star Trek with an unaffected directness and storyteller’s skill. It’s a touchingly human account, and Sierra’s aura of affection somehow even extends to the cutthroat world of politics. The nuanced result reads far more believably than most political memoirs.

Since its 2021 French-language publication in Paris, this work by Bolloré and Bonnassies has sold more than 400,000 copies. Now translated into English for the first time by West and Jones, the book offers a new introduction featuring endorsements from a range of scientists and religious leaders, including Nobel Prize-winning astronomers and Roman Catholic cardinals. This appeal to authority, both religious and scientific, distinguishes this volume from a genre of Christian apologetics that tends to reject, rather than embrace, scientific consensus. Central to the book’s argument is that contemporary scientific advancements have undone past emphases on materialist interpretations of the universe (and their parallel doubts of spirituality). According to the authors’ reasoned arguments, what now forms people’s present understanding of the universe—including quantum mechanics, relativity, and the Big Bang—puts “the question of the existence of a creator God back on the table,” given the underlying implications. Einstein’s theory of relativity, for instance, presupposes that if a cause exists behind the origin of the universe, then it must be atemporal, non-spatial, and immaterial. While the book’s contentions related to Christianity specifically, such as its belief in the “indisputable truths contained in the Bible,” may not be as convincing as its broader argument on how the idea of a creator God fits into contemporary scientific understanding, the volume nevertheless offers a refreshingly nuanced approach to the topic. From the work’s outset, the authors (academically trained in math and engineering) reject fundamentalist interpretations of creationism (such as claims that Earth is only 6,000 years old) as “fanciful beliefs” while challenging the philosophical underpinnings of a purely materialist understanding of the universe that may not fit into recent scientific paradigm shifts. Featuring over 500 pages and more than 600 research notes, this book strikes a balance between its academic foundations and an accessible writing style, complemented by dozens of photographs from various sources, diagrams, and charts.

In a preface, the author isn’t joking when he warns that Loading “isn’t a story you’ll wanna tell at parties”; rather, it’s “what crawls out when the screen gets a hard-on for your eyeballs,” and his cleverly designed layout opens each chapter with a warning: “If you want to stop the installation process, press the ‘Esc’ key.” Marshall, born Markus Jensen, endured a nightmarish childhood—a dad who rejected him, a drug-addicted mom, and a raging bully of a stepfather—and things didn’t go much better after he hit college, where his ex-boyfriend put their sex tape all over the internet, shortly after their breakup. Now, Marshall is a 30-something sex worker in Thread City who entertains male clients out of his hotel room and uploads the resulting sex videos, all in a grab for attention and money, which he achieves—although he feels like he’s starting to lose his humanity. Marshall feels “empty” and “hollow,” which, it turns out, makes him the perfect vehicle for a concoction someone feeds him during a feral orgy with 12 men. As it turns out, the participants have more than sex on their minds; they’re apostles of a new kind of god, merging humanity and computer code, which now gestates inside Marshall. It won’t take high technology for readers to figure out what Klarxon is getting at in this horror tale—in fact, he lays it all out in his introduction: It’s about our “hunger for content . . . a portrait of a world where nothing’s too extreme, too private, too sacred to be sold.” The author is obviously a gifted writer with a strong, if clangorous, voice (“His veins, he could see them, feel them, glowing from within, / blue lightning beneath translucent, alien skin”); a social conscience; and a salient point to make. Readers who don’t mind this book’s general lack of subtlety are sure to love it.