“The responsibility for the nation and people of Tibet was placed upon me the moment I was recognized as the Dalai Lama at the age of two.” When he became Tibet’s leader at 16, the year Chinese soldiers swarmed into the formerly independent nation, he entered into numerous discussions with Mao Zedong (“truly unlike anyone I had met”), Zhou Enlai (“clever and smooth-talking”), and other Communist leaders, one of whom warned him that should he flee because Tibet would meet the same fate as Hungary, freshly crushed by the Soviets. When it became apparent that Mao intended to absorb Tibet as a strategic buffer and as part of the symbolic restoration of “territories that had once been part of the Manchu Qing empire,” the Dalai Lama went into exile and, as he notes, has never since been able to return to his native land. “Mao probably realized that with me gone out of Tibet,” he writes, “China would struggle with the question of legitimacy both of their authority and their presence in Tibet. He was right.” Today, he adds, the regime of Xi Jinping is bent on assimilating Tibet, suppressing religious practices, and removing children to Mandarin-speaking boarding schools. Nevertheless, the Dalai Lama still finds hope for Tibet in the roiling undercurrents of Chinese society—the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989, for example, which, he holds, by no means “marks the end of the Chinese people’s quest for greater freedom, dignity, and democracy.” A surprising discovery is that the Dalai Lama has long been willing to leave Tibet within the People’s Republic of China, but with control over its own internal affairs and a democratic government.

Thirty-one-year-old Connie, an aspiring writer, has never trusted self-proclaimed “nice guys,” because her track record when it comes to dating them has been terrible. Either their niceness is a facade meant to cover up some big lie—like a wife at home—or they’re just pretending to be decent to get into her bed. That’s why she scrutinizes everything her American neighbor, Henry Samuel Beckett, does for her; there’s no way anyone this cheery, well dressed, and all-around kind isn’t hiding some deep, dark secret. To an extent, Connie’s instincts are correct, since Beck does have a secret, but when he finally reveals the truth, she realizes her early skepticism may have been unfounded. At 37, Beck has always been single, but he may have told a teeny-tiny white lie about being married to save face with an irritating colleague at the publishing house where he works. Then, when Connie and Beck run into each other at a book party, she somehow tells his annoying coworker that she’s the mystery wife. Now, the two of them are trapped having to preserve this lie, especially since they’re both heading to a writing retreat where all eyes will be on them—so they’ll need to get their stories straight, not to mention figure out how to sleep in the same bed. Despite her earlier reservations about Beck, Connie finds herself in the best position to learn who he really is, and the truth is that he isn’t just any nice guy—he’s way better. Stein’s latest is a sweet rom-com with the kind of endearing, cinnamon-roll hero the genre can always use more of, as well as a heroine who’s willing to lower her walls and trust someone who might actually be worth the effort. While it would have been nice to see Connie and Beck’s romantic dynamic develop further outside the retreat setting, the characters’ strong introspection and emotional vulnerability make the book impossible to put down.

Evie Wilder and the criminal crew of the renowned La Fable Sombre, including core members Dev, Queenie, and Mad, navigate rainy streets, engage in rooftop conversations, and gather in a graffiti-covered castle, all in pursuit of the talismans that will bring the answers they seek. With Ciaran released from the Wild Dark’s icy-cold grip and the arrival of a unicorn who travels via pentacle, the light-fingered crew go after Pandora’s jar and the Tiger’s Heart gem. They steal, trade, and lose and steal back items, hoping to later barter them to the Basilisk, a dangerous murderer. Evie keeps a protective eye on her teenage siblings, Ezra and Juliet, and reunites with Jason, who’s returned from the Wild Dark a changed person. French phrases, colorfully dyed hair, frequent espressos, and a torrid kiss or two cue the cosmopolitan nature of LFS. The gang members outwit and outfight rivals, following the high-adrenaline lifestyle Evie has come to crave. Unfortunately, events often come together surprisingly neatly, magical talents conveniently match the characters’ needs, and priceless objects seem too easily stolen. The story allows ample space for atmospheric descriptions of clothing, settings, and furnishings. Most main characters read white; Liverpudlian Dev has dark brown skin. The cast is diverse in gender identity and sexuality.

When FBI agent Tony Malik, whose father is Palestinian, travels to the historic city of Hebron to attend a cousin’s wedding, he’s still recovering from a bomb explosion that left him with erratic memory loss. His sense of disorientation deepens when, drawn into the investigation of the chief’s murder—after having been falsely named a suspect—he encounters extreme forms of violence, hatred, and inhumanity on both sides of the conflict. Teamed with hardline Israeli cop Yossi Ben-Gal, he soon recognizes that anyone could have killed the police chief, whose pacifist leanings may have cost him his life. Asked whether he’s worried about dangerous activities in Gaza, Yossi dismisses them as “some virus that pops up every few years, sometimes deadly, sometimes you hardly notice, like the difference between a cold and the flu.” No one, including Malik, is safe in this hostile environment, where religious leaders financed by drug money call for the destruction of the enemy and a “human scale” determines the value of a life, as in one abducted Israeli being worth 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Lacking the deep literary expression of a Robert Stone, Wright falls short of capturing “the implacable darkness of human nature” (though he comes close in having the slain chief’s missing head become a pawn in a deadly game), and he frequently slips into didacticism. But the book, based on the author’s years of reporting in the region, is fully believable—and full of suspense. “What nobody outside understands is the real enemy is not each other,” says one of many ill-fated characters. “It is peace we hate.”

Ironically, the first recipient is Miss Decima Asprey, the queen of Spout Manor, whose reputation for kindness and civility is unimpeachable. Even so, the accusations, which she duly reports to the rector, Rev. Simon Blake, leave her neighbors uneasy when they learn about them, as they quickly do. The stakes rise when Julia Corner, a novelist who’s president of the local Temperance Society, is found dead of an overdose of veronal soon after receiving a second letter. The verdict of the coroner’s court is death from misadventure, but that doesn’t alleviate the palpable apprehensions of the villagers, who fear that their slightest infractions will be aired to the public—a fear that’s soon justified when another letter that hits uncomfortably close to the mark provokes two suicides. Vivian Sheriff, daughter of the local squire, is especially worried that warped reports about her earlier romance with a soldier killed in the Great War will dash all hopes of her engagement to Major Blair. Since no one is willing to report anything to the police, the rector, noting that their shared home is such a peaceful place that “no one leaves the village, except to die,” calls on his friend Ignatius Brown, who’s had some luck with investigations in the past, and it’s Brown who pierces the surprisingly dense layers of deception to identify the culprit.