Fiction

Ana Huang's sixth Kings of Sin book gives Sebastian Laurent and Maya Singh the rivals-to-lovers stage they have been waiting for. A forced collaboration, sharp banter, lush food writing, and a careful slow burn make King of Gluttony a satisfying read, even if a familiar third-act beat and a saggy middle keep it from full marks.

Happy Ending by Chloe Liese follows Thea, a Pittsburgh bookseller, and Alex, a celebrity chef, who fake an old friendship in front of their newly paired exes and accidentally build a real one. Two years later, a forced beach vacation makes them face what they have been hiding. A grown-up rom-com about healing after divorce.

Last One Out by Jane Harper is a quiet, atmospheric mystery set in a half-abandoned mining town where Ro Crowley returns on the fifth anniversary of her son's disappearance. Harper's landscape writing and restrained grief carry the book through a slightly baggy middle, delivering a sad, satisfying read that sits just behind her best work.

Marcus Kliewer's The Caretaker follows Macy Mullins, a broke young woman who takes a Craigslist caretaking job at a remote Oregon house and discovers its unsettling rules are chillingly real. This spoiler-free review weighs Kliewer's sharp voice, analog-horror atmosphere, and OCD-coded dread against a baggy middle and an ending some readers will find frustratingly ambiguous.

In Mad Mabel, Sally Hepworth hands the microphone to Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick: eighty-one, six feet tall, and once the youngest murderer in Australian history. When a nosy seven-year-old and a true-crime podcast drag her secrets into the open, the past she has buried for sixty-six years finally wants its turn to speak.