When Diana, a wealthy sugar magnate in her mid-70s, is abruptly forced into retirement by her own daughter, she relocates to the Ocean’s Edge, “a fifty-five plus community beautifully nestled along Florida’s Treasure Coast.” What begins as a quiet chapter in her life quickly turns into an unexpected adventure. Diana soon befriends a quirky group of retirees whose idea of fun goes far beyond shuffleboard—they spend their days sipping coffee-based cocktails and solving cold cases. Her new circle includes Dennis, a retired detective with a sharp eye for detail; Bill, who’s a bit sleazy but incredibly tech-savvy; Estelle and Filomena, eccentric twin sisters (one a gifted medium, the other a tarot card reader); and Carol, the community’s nurse, who possesses an unusual ability to communicate with animals. Diana, with her wealth and political connections, proves to be an invaluable asset to the team, almost immediately helping them solve several cases. Diana finds her new vocation incredibly satisfying, but Ocean’s Edge isn’t as idyllic as it seems: A self-styled vigilante serial killer is on the loose, targeting those he deems deserving of death based on crimes they’ve committed. Adding to the intrigue is Mr. Anderson, the community’s clever cat, who sees what the humans miss (and indulges his love of Key lime pie along the way). As Diana navigates her new life, she finds romance in an unexpected place; when a crime strikes close to home, the stakes rise dramatically. The mystery element, while present, feels underdeveloped and could benefit from sharper twists or deeper intrigue to truly captivate fans of the genre. Additionally, the narrative can sometimes feel confusing, especially when jumping to the perspective and journal entries of the killer. But for readers seeking a breezy, entertaining escape rather than a tightly constructed puzzle, this story offers a delightful blend of levity and mild thrills.

Editor and annotator Dunner prefaces this work with an account of its author’s spectacular life. At a young age, George Nagel, previously known as Rabbi Yechezkel Taub (born in 1895), was one of the youngest Hasidic leaders in Europe after the death of his father in 1920. The young man began to promote the immigration of religious Jews to Palestine, even paying for a sizable amount of land and bringing his followers there. However, while on a trip to the United States to secure funding, Nagel became stranded as a refugee at the start of World War II. After the war, Nagel found his followers gone, his land abandoned, and his faith all but lost. He changed his name and ultimately earned a degree in psychology at the age of 80. In lieu of pursuing a traditional graduate degree, he chose to volunteer at the Paradise Cove halfway house in California and record “day-to-day accounts of the psychiatric residents, their behavior, and interactions.” This text consists of his field notes, which are largely unedited (Dunner aims to “help Nagel’s words shine, just as he wrote them”). Nagel’s writing is genuine, raw, and frequently humorous. He celebrates both Hanukkah and Christmas; delights, in an ironic way, at being called a “good Christian”; and finds his way back to meaning, love, and faith through his work at Paradise Cove. The manuscript is easy to follow, entertaining, and, at its heart, a “bridge between…two worlds. It’s the record of a former rebbe who, though he may have lost his faith, never lost his sense of mission.” Readers will relate to this story of a man searching for “meaning, healing, and holiness in unexpected places” and marvel at the author’s extraordinary past. Nagel’s honesty and sense of light, combined with Dunner’s expert analysis, makes for an inspiring and captivating work of nonfiction.

Across 15 stories, questions of identity, deception, and artistic expression intertwine, revealing characters who blur the line between perception and reality. In the titular story, a man and woman seemingly meet for the first time and agree to lie to each other, although the depth of their deceptions runs much deeper than it first appears. “A Day at the National People’s Museum” follows Mr. Rubens as he’s summoned for compulsory “Museum Service” in a Kafkaesque nightmare world where the people have decided to live with “no opera, no theatre, no art.” In “Waste Disposal,” a man disposes of a biscuit tin containing the ashes of his wife’s stepmother. A professor of art history attempts to combine academia and eroticism in “Pleasure Pain.” In “Patient Zero,” a painter, suddenly obsessed with what it means to be dead, goes to see a doctor. A screenwriter who has purported himself as a loner now wishes to extricate himself from this fabricated identity by acting in his latest project in “The Right Part,” although his costar faces backlash and violent threats. “Dylan” finds a frequent traveler who discovers his wife is having an affair, and in “The Scream,” a writer finds a poem he doesn’t remember creating and wonders if perhaps his wife is its true author. The final tale, “Rooms,” follows an underperforming writer with “a thing about Kafka,” traveling with his actor boyfriend to Berlin.

These stories, ranging from just three pages in length to more than 40, vary in scope and impact, with some, such as “Waste Disposal” and “An Incident,” presenting intriguing premises that ultimately feel underdeveloped. A notable thread throughout the collection is the prevalence of artists whose creative impulses shape both the narratives and their explorations of beauty and ugliness—a theme that’s pointedly tied to their relationships with others. As one character reflects, “Beauty…has little to do with appearance, or rhythm, or sound. It has little to do with external reality. It is a psychic state; a form of melancholia. And when two people converse in it, it becomes transcendental.” In “A Bowl of Fruit” and “A Clear Conscience,” the juxtaposition is especially striking as acts of cruelty or betrayal coexist with moments of profound insight or aesthetic clarity. The first and longest story, “Imagining More,” features many plot twists and repeated scenes from different perspectives, which can make it difficult to follow, yet this complexity mirrors the fractured, multilayered perception of reality that the collection often evokes. Cacoyannis’ repeated references to Franz Kafka reinforce this sense of surrealism, situating readers in worlds where the familiar is incrementally distorted. The prose throughout is often lyrical and philosophical, reinforcing the thematic preoccupation with capturing fleeting, almost ineffable aspects of existence. The focus on art and perception ties together disparate stories, suggesting that the act of creation mirrors the human effort to find meaning and beauty in the nuances and entanglements of life.

With an introductory reference to severe flooding in South Asia, Schroeder notes the increasing incidence of natural disasters across the world, including in areas with no prior history of them. She explains the impact of growing amounts of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, connecting the dots between the resulting rise in global temperatures that affects biodiversity, precipitation, crop patterns, and human health, and the loss of homes, livelihoods, and food security. Coastal cities are under threat of flooding as sea levels rise, and the fate of small island nations like Kiribati looks grim. The book underscores the responsibility of wealthier nations to fight the impending crisis—their actions generate a disproportionate amount of global emissions—and describes some ways that countries are adapting to the impacts of the changing climate. The crisp text and structured flow make this an informative and accessible read. The book features stock photographs but unfortunately lacks diagrams and other visual representations of the information presented. A short list of suggested actions offers young readers ways to be involved in movements to reduce climate change, while making no mention of how their consumption patterns directly relate to the worsening situation.

“Delaware may be small, but its criminal history contains multitudes,” writes Tabler at the outset of his narrative of the Diamond State’s seamy underbelly. “These stories span a spectrum—from blood-chilling murders that haunted generations to curious capers lost in dusty archives, from soul-crushing injustices that demanded reform to schemes so preposterous they strain credulity.” Tabler takes his readers through the gamut of the seediest misdeeds, from statewide scandals involving prominent politicians and other public figures to grotesque local murders, all drawn from state lore extending well over a century. He tells readers about Noah Benson, whose headless body was found in 1891 in the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, sparking a sensational murder trial that filled the headlines of all the local papers (the head was never found). A more contemporary account outlines the sexual predation of pediatrician Dr. Earl Bradley, who in the 1990s abused dozens of children (a nurse claimed that he “made girls undress before routine exams, kissed and hugged them, and remarked about attractive mothers”). Tabler mentions that state Attorney General Beau Biden wanted Bradley’s offices “wiped off the face of the earth.” In most cases, Tabler offers larger lessons to be learned. For example, about bigamist clergyman Irvin Taylor, who had a deserted wife in Delaware while he was an upstanding married man in Iowa, Tabler writes, “The scandal exposed something more universal: the ease with which a man entrusted with moral and spiritual leadership could live a lie in plain sight.”

A less talented writer might have assumed that the salacious nature of this kind of history would do most of the heavy lifting as far as entertaining readers, but Tabler knows better. He turns the history he’s researched into good stories and often contextualizes it; regarding lawyer-turned-murderer Thomas Capano, he writes: “The once-powerful attorney who had manipulated the highest echelons of Delaware politics—and believed himself untouchable—died alone in a prison infirmary. It was a final, ignominious chapter in his fall from grace.” The author also delves deep into specifics, aided by both his vast research and his sharp ear for great quotes plucked from regional publications, as when Delaware’s newspaper Every Evening wryly commented on customers who persisted in drinking backwoods moonshine even after the state’s Liquor Commission issued beer-making licenses: “Tell the nation that instantaneous death would result from pulling the lobe of the left ear four times in rapid succession, and the undertakers would do a big business.” He’s equally adept at highlighting either absurd dark humor or savage tragedy, depending on the nature of the horror he’s describing, and his choices give the book a fine feeling of balance and depth. He tells the story of a constable named Brown found throttling Wilmington’s mayor in 1891 (“Yes, I grabbed him by the throat,” the constable evenly said, “but he grabbed me first”) with as much storyteller commitment as he does the many con artists who’ve targeted the most vulnerable throughout the state’s history. It’s all done with energy and detail; true crime fans and Delaware history buffs will be delighted.