Tragedy strikes on the eve of Rosa’s 15th birthday: Rosa’s beautiful 18-year-old sister, Julia, is killed by Kike, her jealous boyfriend who’s a member of Mara Salvatrucha, the gang also known as MS-13. After Kike, who’s 28, stabs Julia and Julia’s friend Herman right in front of Rosa and her little brother, Juanito, the siblings are forced to flee; as witnesses, their lives are in danger. The pair set off for the home of their Aunt Hilda in Guatemala, where they plan to wait for Mamá to join them. But when Hilda’s husband announces a plan to force Rosa into prostitution, Hilda tells her to run to her Aunt Teresa in Houston, a journey that involves life-threatening risks. This fast-paced story provides a stark reminder of the senselessness and terrifying impact of gang violence, but the narrative moves at a breakneck speed, jerking readers from one harrowing situation to the next without allowing enough time to pause for real reflection. Some statements feel unsuited to the intended audience, as when Pablo, the father of a family Rosa travels with, observes that she’s at risk because she “has nothing but her youth and beauty. And tragedy is a companion of beautiful women.”

This literary pas de deux from the veteran author and Pulitzer winner Butler is ostensibly set in Paris in 2020. That’s where novelist Amanda Duval and literary scholar Howard Blevins had hoped to revisit the places they first met in 1968—before they married, divorced, and remarried back in the U.S. But with Covid forcing everyone indoors, the novel largely takes place in their rented apartment, and more precisely in their memories. To pass the time, they encourage each other to write and share stories about their courtship, split, and reconciliation. Litigating the past is fraught for the two—an infidelity, acknowledged but not discussed in detail, prompted their divorce—but Butler’s goal is more subtle than staging he-said-she-said debates. Rather, by having them write out their recollections, Butler plays with their distinct styles—Amanda more literary, Howard more bluntly factual—to show that while a couple might agree on the facts, their meaning and the intensity of feelings they evoke can differ substantially. There are silly moments that feel forced, like Howard’s tryst with a fellow modernist scholar determined to precisely reenact the closing pages of Ulysses, but Butler’s approach is generally sober, built on less explosive vignettes about the couple’s past romances and relationship with their daughter. While the overall mood is generally tender and affectionate—the two are in their 70s and disinclined to fly solo again—Butler also adds enough tension to suggest that a marriage involves navigating and reconciling a lot of miscommunication, regardless of the couple’s stage in life.

In a prologue, Peter Jay uses the key given to him by his recently deceased father, John, to access a manuscript that “looks beneath the record” with margins “crowded with a single name, written over and over—Mr. Smith.” The narrative then continues in chapters that jump back and forth in time to share the saga of the Doctrine, a covert agency led by Smith, that spans from the run-up to the American Revolutionary War to Andrew Jackson’s rise to the presidency. This latest series installment introduces a new fictional main character called Cyrus, a foundling brought by Smith—whose origin story was covered in Phantom Patriot (2025)—to John Jay and his wife, Sarah, in Spain in 1780. The couple were residing in the country during Jay’s ambassadorship there. Cyrus is raised as part of the Jay family, eventually moving back with the clan to the United States. Meanwhile, he receives secret instructions on how to become a Doctrine asset. By the age of 16, he begins his assignments, with Cyrus and others traveling the globe to perform such tasks as switching shipping manifests. A watershed moment involves Cyrus meeting the alluring Camille, soon revealed to be a French intelligence agent, with the two drawn to each other despite differing missions. Both Smith and Cyrus elude assassination attempts thanks to surprising saviors. Then, by 1829, the Doctrine itself is in jeopardy with “Jefferson’s shadow fading fast” and “half the old norms…being stripped for sport” in the new Jackson era.

“If this story sends you back to the footnotes others skim—if you pause when the archive goes too quiet too quickly—then it has done its work,” notes Gosselin in his afterword, objectives well met in this intriguing imagining of an Illuminati-type force operating on behalf of the emerging U.S. on the world stage. The author points to his discovery of a notation for “payment rendered for intelligence” to a “Smith” in a 1786 ledger found in the Library of Congress as inspiration for his series. Gosselin’s love of documentation is evident throughout this latest installment, with the Doctrine’s work often involving forging or misdirecting papers and Peter Jay left puzzling over a final code in that unlocked manuscript, setting the stage for a possible fourth volume in this series. Unfortunately, the author can focus a bit too much on Doctrine mechanics and minutiae (the secret meetings, even those with Founding Fathers, become somewhat repetitive) while not always providing enough background on the actual historical events covered. Many readers will likely stop and consult external sources to better understand the context of this novel’s references to the Chesapeake-Leopard affair, the Shays’ Rebellion, U.S. concerns in Haiti in 1802, and more. Scenes featuring Doctrine operatives other than Cyrus and Smith also distract from the compelling duo. Still, the most striking takeaway of this engaging work is how fraught the U.S.’s beginnings were, with the issues faced by the young nation—including disagreements about trade embargoes and how to enter others’ wars—still resonating today.

Bourdain, notes editor Witherspoon, “had wanted to be a writer all his life.” His fame as the host of several television travel series, she adds, was accidental: The gigs were someone else’s idea, but as long as he got to write, it was fine. Some of the pieces assembled here are near-transcripts from those shows, and longtime fans will hear Bourdain’s voice in every word, as when he eats a street taco in the Mexican city of Puebla: “You quickly shove one of the tacos into your mouth, wash it down with a big pull from a can of cold Tecate—which you’ve previously rubbed with lime and jammed into a plate of salt, encrusting the top—and you can feel your eyes roll up into your head.” Elsewhere, alcohol being a constant, Bourdain celebrates a Sardinian wine made by “an old man sitting in the corner reading a soccer magazine, a cigarette dangling from his lips,” and declaring that he wouldn’t trade a trunkful of big-ticket vintages for the rustic red; offers lessons on how to drink vodka in Russia (“knock back your entire shot in one gulp”); and populates his fictions with woozy, boozy characters (“Naturally, work like this required alcohol”). There are other drugs aplenty as well, befitting Bourdain’s longtime worship of Hunter S. Thompson and the culture of restaurant work in the golden 1970s and ’80s: “We thought ourselves dangerous, trend-settingly debauched, and, of course, in no time at all, had made a serious botch of it all.” But whatever his topic, absent a few forgettable pieces of juvenilia, Bourdain delivers whip-smart, mot juste, and funny pronouncements on the world. And never mind that he condones putting ketchup on a hamburger.

During the dinner date they’re finally going out on, Chicago area therapist Gwendolyn Lord shares with English professor Cameron Winter a story she’s just heard from forensic psychologist Livy Swain, an old school friend, of an impossible crime. Owen McKay, arrested six months ago for killing his wife and son and crying, “It’s still there! Still there!,” was shot to death with a nail gun inside his closely watched prison cell. Though his initial reaction is idle curiosity, Winter resolves to show off his prowess to Gwendolyn by solving the mystery. Dr. Billy Whitefield, the pathologist who conducted the postmortem on McKay, shares with Winter a monstrous revelation that he’s been blackmailed into concealing: He removed a spidery attachment from McKay’s brain whose existence was deleted from the official report. After a friend at his college links the implant to Thaumatix—a company whose motto is “We’re in the business of miracles”—Winter learns of another case that sounds eerily similar: the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a Connecticut high school student by a previously inoffensive carpenter who’s killed before Winter can question him. Surrounded by assassins and amoral corporate overlords, Winter leans more and more into his relationship with Gwendolyn, though the person he most wants to talk to is the Recruiter, the nameless boss he trusted to make life-or-death decisions when he worked as a contract killer. Miraculously, the Recruiter, who’s vanished, returns to Winter’s life. But what if he can’t be trusted any more than everyone else?