When 
a Boston police officer turned up dead in the snow in January 2022, it’s safe to say no one could have foreseen what it would become: a controversial, true-crime mystery that grabbed international headlines. In his new book, Blizzard of Lies: Karen Read, John O’Keefe, and the Shocking Unsolved Murder in Cop Town, USA (BenBella Books/Simon & Schuster, 2026), veteran journalist Dave Wedge, a Boston College graduate, provides a detailed and immersive account of the subsequent trial of the officer’s girlfriend. According to Wedge, the apparently open-and-shut manslaughter case quickly devolved into chaos—with a rogue journalist, a mistrial, institutional corruption, police cover-ups, and polarizing public protests. In Blizzard of Lies, Wedge shares inside stories and new details, based on interviews with people on both sides of the case, including law enforcement, Karen Read and her legal team, and the family of John O’Keefe. Wedge is a bestselling author whose previous books include Boston Strong: A City’s Triumph Over Tragedy and Blood & Hate: The Untold Story of Marvelous Marvin Hagler’s Battle for Glory, among others.
The death of a cop
A mystery in paradise
The new novel The Dahlia Suite (Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, 2026) by Carinn Jade takes place on Beck Island in the Caribbean. Gabby, the concierge at the island’s most exclusive resort, and resort guests Paige, a frustrated writer, and Lindsay, a Hollywood starlet, come together to investigate a string of haunting disappearances in the tropical paradise. The women must race to untangle the mystery before another woman vanishes. A Boston College graduate, Jade is also the author of The Astrology House, a 2025 International Thriller Writers’ Awards finalist in the category of Best First Novel. The Astrology House is being adapted for television by Peacock.
Catholic Social Teaching and the meaning of work
Burnout, low wages, gig labor, layoffs, and the struggle to balance purpose with pay have made many people questioning what work is, what it could be, and what it should be. Kate Ward, who earned a Ph.D. in theological ethics from Boston College, offers a fresh, timely perspective on work that is rooted in Catholic social teaching. Her new book, Making a Life: Catholic Social Teaching and the Meaning of Work (T&T Clark/Bloomsbury, 2026), explores work not only as a paid job but as purposeful human activity, examining it through five lenses: purpose, care, food, art, and pay. Making a Life encourages readers to rethink what work is for, who it serves, and how it can nurture human flourishing. Ward is an associate professor of theology at Marquette University. She also is the author of Wealth, Virtue and Moral Luck: Christian Ethics in an Age of Inequality and co-editor of Bothering to Love: James F. Keenan’s Renewal and Retrieval of Catholic Ethics.
Believe
After a 30-year career in neonatal intensive care nursing, Brenda Sheridan, a 1989 Boston College graduate, wrote her first novel, A Better Sense of Being. In Sheridan’s story, Iris Macdonald moves from Manhattan to the Berkshires in the wake of her boyfriend’s death. There, she takes up painting and hears voices in her head. Could she be a medium? A Better Sense of Being is about healing, hope, and the magic that occurs when we allow ourselves to believe.
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Coming to America
Early 20th-century America is seen through the eyes of immigrants in Adjacent to History, a book about author John Rilli’s family who came from Europe and settled in New York, Connecticut, and Philadelphia. Rilli’s ancestors left Sicily, Germanic Europe, and Ireland to build new lives in America. Rilli weaves his family’s immigrant story with larger historical events, creating a rich tapestry of resilience, identity, and cultural preservation. Rilli earned a bachelor’s degree (1998) and an M.B.A. (2009) from Boston College.
Discovering home
In the award-winning picture book My Heart Speaks Kriolu (Denene Millner Books/Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2025), a grandfather talks of bringing his granddaughter to their ancestral home, Cabo Verde. But each time he urges the young girl to speak Kriolu, the Portuguese creole native to the West African country, the girl stumbles over her own words. She wonders if she can’t speak the language, how can her grandfather’s home ever truly be hers, too? But on Saturday afternoon walks with her Papa, the girl connects with the smells, sounds, and feel of her Cabo Verdean heritage and learns the true meaning of home. My Heart Speaks Kriolu was written by 2004 Boston College graduate Stefanie Foster Brown, a fourth-generation Cabo Verdean American. The book is inspired by the author’s memories of taking neighborhood walks with her own grandfather, one of the last in her family to speak Kriolu.
A modern retelling of ‘Persuasion’
Worse Than Strangers (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster, 2026), a new book by 2019 Boston College graduate Kyleigh Leddy, is a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Set on Nantucket, Worse Than Strangers is the story of Lily Gardner, unemployed and heartbroken, and her mother, Rose, a therapist whose world is rocked by the handsome renter staying in their guest cottage. Leddy takes Lily and Rose on a journey of romance, second chances, and finding a new path in life. Worse Than Strangers is Leddy’s debut novel. Her previous work is The Perfect Other: A Memoir of My Sister. A licensed therapist, Leddy teaches in the BC Woods College of Advancing Studies’ Master of Arts in Writing & the Human Condition program.
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The prosecutor and the madam
Bestselling authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, have co-written a historical novel about a prosecutor and a madam who team up to bring down a notorious Mob boss in 1930s New York City. In A Pair of Aces (Penguin Random House/Berkley, 2026), Assistant District Attorney Eunice Carter, Manhattan’s first Black female prosecutor, and Polly Adler, whose high-class brothel has a client list of well-known names, fashion a case against Lucky Luciano, head of New York’s five largest organized crime families. Bridging the enormous divide between them and risking their own lives, Carter and Adler assemble evidence that leads to a sensational trial and guilty conviction. A Pair of Aces is the June 2026 pick of Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club. Benedict and Murray have also collaborated on the novels The Personal Librarian and The First Ladies. Benedict is a Boston College alumna from the Class of 1990.
‘Ripple Effects’
Ripple Effects and Other Stories (Golden Antelope Press, 2026) is a new short story collection from 1996 Boston College graduate Lesley Mahoney O’Connell. The volume showcases 11 short stories featuring quiet but intelligent characters who see themselves as outsiders in their own worlds. Mostly set in New England coastal villages, O’Connell’s stories are connected by nuanced water motifs. At their core, these stories hint at the strength and hope which can arise in disheartening circumstances. O’Connell’s fiction has appeared in Post Road, Psychopomp, and Solstice.
The myth of neutrality
In his new book The Opinionated University: Academic Freedom, Diversity, and the Myth of Neutrality in American Higher Education (University of Chicago Press, 2026), Boston College graduate Brian Soucek pushes against the tide of universities increasingly pledging to stay neutral about contentious issues. He argues that universities should focus instead on what their mission should be, and who should determine it. According to Soucek, in everything from curricular and admissions decisions to their response to outside rankings and their evaluation of faculty, universities express the values at the heart of their mission. He argues that those pushing for neutrality are only preventing universities from standing up for their values. Soucek, who earned a bachelor’s degree from BC in 1998, is the Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis.
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