New mysteries scary but touching

These hot new mysteries range from touching to terrifying:

“I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom” by Jason Pargin: The strange black box in Pargin’s novel is the size of “a footlocker.” Inside, it may contain something that triggers an American apocalypse, or it may just be a “nothing-burger.” Either way, what’s inside is the mystery propelling this provocative, rambunctious, comedic cultural rant of a novel that’s fueled by internet paranoia, conspiracy theories and outlandish action scenes.

Abbott Coburn, a 20-something Lyft driver, reluctantly helps Ether, also 20-something, get the black box to Washington, D.C.

Abbott has spent most of his time online. He’s socially awkward and “can’t turn off his brain.” Ether, on the other hand, is determined, pragmatic and, despite what her name implies, far from soporific. A posse of eccentric characters (some misinformed, many deluded) chases them across the country, cheered on by a virtual torch-waving mob.

“Guide Me Home” by Attica Locke: Against the backdrop of America’s “fascism under the guise of a return to better days, nostalgia as a slow, magnolia-scented death,” Locke’s “Guide Me Home” — the final book in her moving Highway 59 trilogy — finds Darren Mathews no longer a Texas Ranger, a career choice that informed his identity as a Black Texan for most of his life.

Years before, Mathews did “a wrong thing for a right reason.” The choice haunts him, eventually sending him into a nihilistic funk where “managing his sense of doom” is “nearly a full-time job.” When a young Black woman goes missing from an all-white sorority, no one is concerned except Darren’s estranged mother. The investigation forces Mathews to consider that the “men who had raised him had deceived him his whole life.” This realization and a looming indictment make Mathews worry that “his cynicism, home-brewed over the years of living in a culture of double-dealing and dishonesty, was clouding his judgment.”