Olaf Olafsson (One Station Away) delivers a spellbinding mystery in his sixth novel, The Sacrament.

The story follows Sister Johanna, a French nun who is called to Iceland years after she investigated alleged abuse at a Catholic school there. Present-tense narration depicts her journey as she leaves behind her convent and travels to Paris, which brings back memories of her formative youth. Flashbacks reveal her relationship with a young Icelandic woman named Halla, and the machinations of an overbearing deacon named Raffin, who eventually becomes a cardinal and is the one to dispatch her to Iceland. Further flashbacks reveal her first trip to Iceland, her investigation and the dramatic death of the school's headmaster, August Frans.

Olafsson writes as sparely as the Icelandic landscape he describes, with a muted lyricism that carries the novel forward. Sister Johanna has rich memories, and she is a complex character, expertly drawn, who questions God and her mission. At the center of the novel is a story of forbidden love between two women, and the power struggle between Sister Johanna and Cardinal Raffin. Raffin discovers the nun's secret and uses it against her. This backstory is carried to Iceland, where Sister Johanna must confront the report she wrote decades earlier and the persistent mystery of the schoolmaster's death. She also yearns to visit Halla although she's been warned not to.

Pulling all these threads together, Olafsson creates a moody noir piece with religious overtones. The Sacrament is quieter than the average thriller yet still provides some riveting plot twists. Above all, Olafsson has created dynamic and memorable characters. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset

In this exciting thriller from Dexter creator Jeff Lindsay, a corrupt Chicago pharmaceutical billionaire unveils a $50-million statue weighing more than 10 tons. The mayor is paid to give a speech praising the billionaire at the dedication ceremony. Master thief Riley Wolfe then steals both the statue and the billionaire. In broad daylight. In front of a crowd and armed security.

Riley was paid to steal the statue by a cartel drug lord, who wanted it as a trophy. But Riley took the billionaire to mete out societal justice for price gouging prescription medication.

Although Riley is paid well for his efforts, money isn't his sole motive. He's so confident in his abilities, he constantly craves a bigger thrill, perhaps an impossible feat. And he finds it while flipping through a magazine on a commercial flight--Riley decides to steal a priceless diamond from the crown jewels of Iran. But there are two obstacles: he has no idea how to pull it off, and relentless FBI Special Agent Frank Delgado has been on his trail for years. The fact that he hasn't caught Wolfe makes Delgado more determined than ever to do so.

Just Watch Me launches a spectacular projected series. Wolfe shares traits with antihero Dexter Morgan of the popular novel and television series--they're both bad guys with a conscience, and each feels he is making the world a tiny bit better with their actions. Both characters are brilliant manipulators, but Riley might be the more interesting character in that his methods are more cerebral than bloody. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer

Dustin M. Hoffman's stories (One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist) are ballads for the working class who toil in the shadows, Studs Terkel's "walking wounded." In No Good for Digging, 31 short tales include the weirdly fantastical (magicians, Ouija board inspectors, diviners) as well as the everyday (plumbers, salesmen, prostitutes). All are treated with the same reverence, as they try to grind out a living against the odds and sometimes against each other.

Many of these tales are poignant metaphors for the cruelties of surviving, the risks taken and the wrongs done to eke forward and protect one's own. The opener, "A Nesting," sets the stage formidably in two short yet crushing paragraphs. Construction of a home has trapped a nest of birds behind the sheetrock. Wielding hammers, each trade points the finger at another and proceeds with their own assigned task, ignoring the sounds of "baby wings fluttering in tangles of pink fiberglass insulation," the house to be "forever haunted by hollow bones and black feathers."

Destructive work ethics and expectations are masterfully explored in "On the Strongest Man Compound," where the Strongest Man is shrinking. He shrugs it off and continues to lift, but still diminishes, to the horror of his fellow Strongest Men. They add weight and reps to his routine, then ponder their reputations and his exile when he keeps shrinking under the burden.

With thanks to those who did and didn't survive building houses with him, Hoffman, a former tradesman and current associate professor of English at Winthrop University, does the trades proud with these empathetic reflections of his experience. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

Originally published in 1970, The General Zapped an Angel collects nine science fiction and fantasy tales from the late American author and TV writer Howard Fast (Spartacus). Inventively strange and thought-provoking, Fast's tales satirize the human condition, focusing on greed. His characters' fixations on seeing their visions realized leads them into ethically treacherous ground: a warmonger shoots an angel and wants just to bury it; an alien race grants a mouse human cognition and telepathy yet refuses to end its suffering on Earth; a husband sells his soul for tomorrow's Wall Street Journal and considers the devil's suggestions on how to afford stock. Other stories explore existentialism. In "The Interval," the protagonist tries to drive to safety when he realizes his world is a stage set being changed. And "The Movie House" modernizes Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" with a projectionist who denies that doors unlock even after a committeeman ventures outside.

Fast seems to condemn inaction as he portrays individuals complacently accepting disaster. After insects decimate cities, a husband assures his wife they "can only live with it the way it is." As Mother Earth bleeds out, the dowser who approved blasting for oil goes on reading his newspaper, noting it's "too late" to help.

Though his aliens' first reaction to humans is "Ugh!," Fast embeds hope in the stories "Mohawk" (a Mohawk Indian successfully meditates on the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral) and "The Vision of Milty Boil" (a short man convinces society that smaller is better). Disturbingly funny and gratifyingly provocative, this eccentric collection encourages readers to think hard about what they value. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer

At the start of Chris Hauty's tense thriller Deep State, scrappy army boxer Hayley Chill abruptly exits the military to become a White House intern under President Richard Monroe, a divisive, Russia-loving blowhard. She receives a hostile reception from the other interns, who all come from money and Ivy League-educations and mistake her West Virginia twang for a lack of intelligence.

But Chief of Staff Peter Hall and President Monroe view her as a cut above the rest of the wannabes within her department, after witnessing Hayley's quick thinking during a staff meeting. Before either of them can fast-track her career, however, Hall is found dead at home one morning while awaiting a brief to be delivered by Hayley. Since she discovers the body, Hayley is questioned by an FBI agent who suspects her of withholding information.

And she is. Hayley has discovered a CIA-led plot to assassinate the president. The people behind the plot see President Monroe as a major threat to democracy, but Hayley sets out to stop them.

On the surface, Hayley seems to be a wide-eyed true believer of the president's absolute power. But first-time novelist Hauty makes her a formidable, cagey adversary to anyone who stands in her way. Jealous of attention paid to Hayley by Hall and Monroe, the other interns and staff repeatedly try to sabotage her but fail miserably. When the mercenaries hired to carry out the assassination come after her to stop her meddling, she always manages to elude them. Deep State lets readers think they know what's going on, right up until a jaw-dropping finale. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer

In Sidney Lumet: A Life, Columbia University film professor Maura Spiegel (The Breast Book) provides a discerning chronicle of the life of the groundbreaking American director. Known for seminal films such as 12 Angry Men and Network, Lumet's directorial career spanned five decades in film, television and theater. Born into a Polish-Jewish family, he was a child actor in Yiddish theater, radio shows, Broadway and film. He started working as a television director in 1950, when directors "were making it up in this new medium as they went," giving Lumet the freedom to explore "the untidiness and unexpectedness of human motives." Later, when directing films, Lumet notably eschewed the glamour of Hollywood, instead filming mostly in New York City. His distinguished and prolific career includes 43 movies, more than 75 television episodes, movies and "plays for the small screen," and an Academy lifetime achievement award.

Lumet "left no diaries, no papers, no correspondence," a challenge that biographer Spiegel overcame through extensive interviews of the people in Lumet's life. Though he didn't like to dwell on the past--"his inclination was to keep moving forward and not to look back"--his experiences were often reflected in his films, which frequently featured themes of urban poverty, political corruption, familial drama, Jewish culture, and racism and discrimination. Peppered with analyses of his work as well as profiles of the actors, artists and family in his life (including strained family relationships and his four marriages), Spiegel has created a thorough and fascinating account, both personal and professional, of a director whose legacy continues to have a significant impact on modern cinema. --Jennifer Oleinik, freelance writer and editor

Historian Robert Harms brings his considerable expertise to bear on the bloody means by which the Congo River Basin was exploited for commercial gain in Land of Tears: The Exploration and Exploitation of Equatorial Africa. The Congo River Basin, rich in rubber and more, was largely dense rain forest that covered parts of six modern-day nations. As he did in The Diligent, his excellent history of the slave trade, Harms follows a few important--and deeply flawed--individuals who helped pave the way for exploitation on a massive scale.

Land of Tears begins in the 1870s, when the region's difficult landscape was just beginning to be scouted by traders, raiders and explorers from Europe and Zanzibar. Harms is skilled at interpreting the deeply biased and self-serving accounts of explorers like Henry Morton Stanley, showing how his 1875-1876 expedition to find the source of the Nile turned into a remarkably violent trip down the Congo River. The Zanzibari trader Tippu Tip plays a major role in the narrative and in Harms's argument that violence, slavery and the ivory trade were deeply intertwined. By following the ivory back to a factory manufacturing piano keys in Connecticut, Harms demonstrates that an already globalized economy fueled and benefited from the bloody work of people like Tippu Tip.

Land of Tears tracks the pursuit of profit at the expense of human life to its apotheosis in the era of "red rubber." Individuals like Stanley and Tippu Tip had diverse motivations, but Harms is clear-eyed about the brutal extractive system they helped create. --Hank Stephenson, manuscript reader, the Sun magazine

Celebrated poet Danez Smith (Don't Call Us Dead) delivers a rapturous cry for all their friends and lovers in the profoundly moving collection Homie.

Smith writes with both power and precision, and their poetic forms are as diverse as their topics. Homie teems with stream-of-conscious prose poetry and in equal measure gleams with lapidary stanzas of more formalized verse. Even part of the book's acknowledgements section is set in poetic fashion. Smith's personal style mixes modern slang with gorgeous imagery, resulting in verse as colorful and fanciful as Pablo Neruda but also savvy, down-to-earth, close to the heart.

Thematically, Homie focuses on friendship, as the poet celebrates the beloved people in and out of their life. Smith's blackness and queerness frame struggles and larger questions of kinship, and they invoke friends, lovers, family members, other minority groups and even strangers. These people are exalted by the searching love that drives these poems. In "my president," Smith shouts out to the "trans girl making songs in her closet, spinning the dark/ into a booming dress." And there's boundless love for fellow dark-skinned people, "we caramelized children/ of dark stars."

Homie doesn't gloss over the oppression black people have suffered at the hands of white people. But neither does the poet slam the door on the possibility of love and reconciliation. This collection is filled with passion and humanity and demonstrates why Smith has been called one of the best poets of their generation. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset

In Me and Banksy, Tanya Lloyd Kyi bites off a lot--cyberbullying, the trade-off between security and privacy, the artist's role in society--but no more than she can chew, and no more than readers can digest.

The middle schoolers at Mitchell Academy are uneasy when, in the putative interest of student safety, the administration introduces some changes: indoor security cameras and ID tags that the kids must scan to enter the building. The students' skepticism is borne out when embarrassing videos of kids and faculty show up on the forum for the school's PixSnappy account. When a video is posted showing eighth grader Dominica Rivers alone in the library taking a moment to right-side-out an inside-out shirt, she and her friends vow to uncover who is sending the files. Dominica finds solace in her head counsel of sorts: Banksy, the real-life anonymous British street artist whose work highlights social justice matters. As it happens, Mitchell Academy has an open house coming up; why take to the streets like Banksy when Dominica can take to the school corridors?

Despite all the book's capital-I Issues, Kyi, who has written nonfiction as well as fiction for kids and young adults, doesn't skimp on narrator Dominica's personal life. In both face-to-face dialogues and text exchanges, Dominica and her besties discuss their family dramas and romantic foibles ("What is it with you and Miranda, hmmmm????"). Me and Banksy may be preoccupied with the day's technological toys, but it puts in the foreground a timeless concern: teen angst. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author