At the start of this absorbing series launch set in East Texas from Edgar-finalist Locke (Pleasantville), Texas Ranger Darren Mathews is suspended from the force because he rushed, while off duty, to the aid of a friend in a dispute that turned violent. Then, against his family's wishes and the law, he determines to check out a racially charged crime a few hours up the highway. In the desolate town of Lark, the bodies of a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman have surfaced in a bayou within a few days of each other. Darren discovers that the town revolves around two prominent figures: Wally Jefferson, proprietor of a white supremacist bar and close confidant to the county sheriff, and Wally's neighbor Geneva Sweet, a black business owner with her own brand of authority. As Darren investigates the two murders, he becomes immersed in Lark's fraught history. Darren must deal with his conflicting loyalties to his family and to Texas, as well as his identity as a black man, as he struggles for justice in this tale of racism, hatred, and, surprisingly, love. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts Entertainment. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Darren Matthews was born and raised in rural East Texas and is intimately acquainted with the racial tensions in its small towns. On suspension for an incident involving a friend who may have killed a man, the African American Texas Ranger is asked by an old FBI friend to look into the deaths of a black Chicago lawyer and a local white woman who were both found dead days apart in a bayou near Lark, TX. Once his boss learns of his new assignment, Mathews is reinstated and given authority to investigate. Locke, winner of the Harper Lee Prize for legal fiction (-Pleasantville) and a writer and producer of the show Empire, has woven an atmospheric, convoluted mystery seasoned with racial tension and family loyalty. VERDICT Locke is a gifted author, and her intriguing and compelling crime novel will keep readers engrossed. [See Prepub Alert, 3/27/17.]-Sandra Knowles, South Carolina State Lib., Columbia © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

What appears at first to be a double hate crime in a tiny Texas town turns out to be much more complicatedand more painfulthan it seems.With a degree from Princeton and two years of law school under his belt, Darren Mathews could have easily taken his place among the elite of African-American attorneys. Instead, he followed his uncle's lead to become a Texas Ranger. "What is it about that damn badge?" his estranged wife, Lisa, asks. "It was never intended for you." Darren often wonders if she's right but nonetheless finds his badge useful "for working homicides with a racial elementmurders with a particularly ugly taint." The East Texas town of Lark is small enough to drive through "in the time it [takes] to sneeze," but it's big enough to have had not one, but two such murders. One of the victims is a black lawyer from Chicago, the kind of crusader-advocate Darren could have been if he'd stayed on his original path; the other is a young white woman, a local resident. Both battered bodies were found in a nearby bayou. His job already jeopardized by his role in a race-related murder case in another part of the state, Darren eases his way into Lark, where even his presence is enough to raise hackles among both the town's white and black residents; some of the latter, especially, seem reluctant and evasive in their conversations with him. Besides their mysterious resistance, Darren also has to deal with a hostile sheriff, the white supremacist husband of the dead woman, and the dead lawyer's moody widow, who flies into town with her own worst suspicions as to what her husband was doing down there. All the easily available facts imply some sordid business that could cause the whole town to explode. But the deeper Darren digs into the case, encountering lives steeped in his home state's musical and social history, the more he begins to distrust his professionaland personalinstincts. Locke, having stockpiled an acclaimed array of crime novels (Pleasantville, 2015, etc.), deserves a career breakthrough for this deftly plotted whodunit whose writing pulses throughout with a raw, blues-inflected lyricism. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE, by Celeste Ng. (Penguin Press, $27.) The magic of Ng's second novel, which opens with arson and centers on an interracial adoption, lies in its power to implicate every character - and likely many readers - in the innocent delusion that "no one sees race here." DEFIANCE: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Anne Barnard, by Stephen Taylor. (Norton, $28.95.) Over the course of Taylor's biography, a picture emerges of Lady Anne Barnard as a cleareyed yet self-doubting woman determined to live life on her own terms even as she worried about her right to set those terms. AT THE STRANGERS' GATE: Arrivals in New York, by Adam Gopnik. (Knopf, $26.95.) In his new memoir, Gopnik recalls the decade after he and his soon-to-be wife moved from Montreal to New York, in 1980. Always the elegant stylist, he effortlessly weaves in the city's cultural history, tracing his path from graduate student in art history to staff writer for The New Yorker. HOME FIRE, by Kamila Shamsie. (Riverhead, $26.) In a challenging and engrossing novel full of tiny but resonant details, two families find their fates entwined when a young man travels to Syria to join ISIS, following in the steps of the jihadist father he never really knew. BLUEBIRD, BLUEBIRD, by Attica Locke. (Mulholland/ Little, Brown, $26.) This murder mystery follows Darren Matthews, a black Texas Ranger, as he tries to solve a dual killing in a small town full of zany characters, buried feelings and betrayals that go back generations. THE STONE SKY: The Broken Earth: Book Three, by N. K. Jemisin. (Orbit, paper, $16.99.) Jemisin, who writes the Book Review's Otherworldly column about science fiction and fantasy, won a Hugo Award for each of the first two novels in her Broken Earth trilogy. In the extraordinary conclusion, a mother and daughter do geologic battle for the fate of the earth. AUTUMN, by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Translated by Ingvild Burkey. (Penguin Press, $27.) In this collection of finely honed miniature essays, the first of a planned quartet based on the seasons, the Norwegian author of the multi-volume novel "My Struggle" describes the world for his unborn child. AFTERGLOW (A Dog Memoir), by Eileen Myles. (Grove, $24.) Myles, the poet and autobiographical novelist, turns her attention to the role her dog Rosie played in her life and art. ONE NATION AFTER TRUMP: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet-Deported, by E. J. Dionne Jr., Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann. (St. Martin's, $25.99.) Seasoned Washington observers examine how Donald Trump's rise reflects long-term Republican trends. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

The deaths of a black man from Chicago and a local white woman in Lark, a one-stoplight East Texas town, within days of each other, just have to be related events. The trouble is, no one in local law enforcement wants to connect the crimes. Then, when Darren Matthews, a black Texas Ranger, shows up to conduct a more thorough investigation, Aryan Brotherhood-fueled bitterness erupts. Darren's passion for justice is heightened by a promise he makes to the first victim's widow, a gut feeling about the husband of victim number two, tenderness toward the black woman who runs the local café, and his own complicated family history. As Darren flirts with the bourbon bottle and Randie, he taps into his small-town Texas heritage and firsthand knowledge of racism to unearth buried memories of the town's long history of racially and romantically motivated crimes. A producer and writer for the acclaimed TV series Empire as well as an award-winning crime-fiction writer, Locke (Pleasantville, 2015) brings a cinematic polish to her tale of sordid violence bubbling in a Texas bayou backwater.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2017 Booklist