One of Natalie Olsen’s two best friends died of cancer. Now she stands at the bedside of the other, Cara, who’s been left in a coma with little brain activity by a super-strong date-rape drug. Cara left a club with a stranger and was found unconscious at a bus stop. Another woman is in the hospital in the same condition, and the police are looking for answers. After Natalie, who knows more than she’s saying, saves a handsome, well-dressed man named Nick from being struck by a passing car on 34th Street, she’s rewarded with an offer of a short-term job she really needs. While having coffee with Nick, she spies a magazine cover with a picture of the man Cara left the club with. The good-looking redhead is Nick’s boss, Geoffrey Rosenberg, cryptocurrency king and CEO of IxResearch, and the job is cleaning at his stunning estate. The position will not only help Natalie financially but give her a chance to spy on Rosenberg, who may have put her friend in a coma. The estate staff are distinctly unfriendly, and there are cameras everywhere and very strict rules, especially about alcohol. Natalie is hired to help at a big party being thrown to celebrate the company’s going public. Despite being in danger every minute, Natalie continues to hunt for clues that will uncover the truth about what happened to Cara.

Jasmine Morgan has gotten to where she is as a PR strategist because she’s good at her job, and, up until now, there’s been no sign of that changing. However, when she’s given a project involving the revitalization of a small Florida town, it’s made clear that she has competition in the form of her distractingly attractive archnemesis, Derek Carter. What makes the stakes even higher is that the winner of the most successful pitch doesn’t just get bragging rights—they also get to keep their job. As they reluctantly descend on Miller’s Cove together, they’re instantly at odds, but their arrival also attracts attention from the locals, who are suspicious of any outsiders who might be poking into the town’s business. To win their trust, Jasmine agrees to swallow her pride and consent to Derek’s idea that they pose as a pair of blissful newlyweds. It shouldn’t be all that hard to pretend to be in love with her professional rival, especially since she knows how good he looks with his shirt off, but their shared hotel room makes keeping her distance easier said than done. As their investigation into Miller’s Cove intensifies, so does their attraction, until the lines between fake and real start to blur. Eden’s latest contemporary romance has an intriguing premise but is lacking in execution; there’s no real build-up to the fake-marriage arrangement that makes up the bulk of the story, so Jasmine and Derek’s growing romance feels less than earned, especially on the heels of a combative dinner. While the story is full of familiar tropes that could prove appealing for some readers, it also spends too much time with its leads physically separated, when more interactions between Jasmine and Derek would have allowed their romance to develop more deeply on the page.

Researchers too often dismiss homelessness as a social problem that will “always be with us.” But the truth is far more complex. Drawing on historical analysis, policy research, and his own experiences working with homeless people, Markee argues that modern mass homelessness is an offshoot of the neoliberal agenda that has overtaken American politics. He begins by suggesting that the current “New Gilded Age” era mirrors the original Gilded Age’s extreme inequalities. Taking New York as his starting point, Markee examines the relationship between urban homelessness to economic crises like the Panic of 1873 and the Great Depression. Both led to dispossession, especially among those already made vulnerable by race or class, but it was not until the recession of the 1970s—and the brutal policies of austerity that defined it—that the modern phenomenon of mass homelessness emerged. Yet the problem was never linked to systemic/policy failures that resulted in, for example, the loss of affordable housing or the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. Rather, blame was laid on homeless people themselves, who were categorized as a blight on urban spaces and demonized as criminals. From New York, mass homelessness spread to other cities across the United States during the 1980s as a pro-capitalist Reagan administration laid the foundation for Trumpian “oligarchical ethnonationalism.” Despite the current dominance of neoliberalism, Markee holds out hope that more compassionate policies—like laws ensuring the right to shelter—can return incrementally through continued social activism that remembers the sacrifices of homeless people Markee memorializes by name throughout the book.

“Fuck it, is the general feeling here, because we are minimum-wage employees in a doomed independent bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky.” So opens Henderson’s 50th edition (“L in the dead language”) of his prize volume, the words a bitter salvo from Christie Hodgen’s story “Rich Strike.” The year is 1999, the malcontents are young MFA holders who will go on to lives of unquiet desperation. If there’s a theme that runs through this volume, it’s just that: Granted that literary writers tend not to be the happiest bunch, there’s seldom a smile cracked in this portly anthology. There are some nicely ironic turns, though. One comes from Sarah Green’s found poem, “Tinder,” made up of pitch lines from the eponymous dating service, such as this: “I’m sort of like a deer: wild & free; gentle, yet / Love my life, won’t settle, must see stars.” (Now that’s a writer who deserves more space here.) Another irony begins with Ryan Van Meter’s “An Essay About Coyotes,” which is mostly about a dead dog, complete with the admonition to his writing students, “Write the animal essay that only you can write. Please don’t make me read fifteen dead dog essays.” A dead-dog essay follows a few dozen pages later, and an almost-dead-dog story follows shortly afterward, one that could be a country song (“Their mother is serving eighteen months in a state penitentiary after a prescription drug–fueled joyride…”). The book’s highlights are many, but the best are nonfiction, one a meditation on cancer by the noted poet Ted Kooser, the other a lovely memoir by Stephen Akey called “The Department of Everything” that recounts time spent as a reference librarian answering questions such as, “What time was low tide in Boston Harbor on May 14, 1932?” Nothing about dead dogs, though…

“I still can’t believe I wrote and published an essay collection spurred solely by my love for reading.” Readers of this book might feel the same way. Filled with breathless pleasure, this clutch of essays by Korean author Hwang (Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, 2022) hovers between the trite and the profound. Big books take time. Reading at night prompts thoughts and dreams. Always take a book on vacation. Some books are not worth finishing (Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose stands out here). Then, there are books that offer something new each time we open them. Thoreau’s Walden prompts the reader to think seriously about life choices. How can you “truly live a life [you] wanted”? But all the reader gets is: “I respect Thoreau for looking beyond the superficial things in life in search for his ideal way of living, and so I eagerly recommended his books to my friends.” Anyone who reads for pleasure or instruction will agree with the author: “The joy of reading extends beyond the last page of the book.” Or: “The biggest charm of book clubs is how they encourage a difference in opinions.” Aristotle, Hannah Arendt, and Goethe jostle throughout, their powerful quotations often reduced to banalities. The most absorbing sections of the book are the author’s reflections on reading in Korea and on the ways in which contemporary Korean writers seek to balance self-examined life with professional striving. There is a larger point about the sociology of reading—about the ways in which books, bookstores, book clubs, and television interviews contribute to a literate, reflective life. But much of this remains implicit. “Books are friends we make along life’s journey.” Would that this book had been a more compelling companion.