Carol writes: In Jacqueline Winspear’s A Lesson in Secrets, private investigator Maisie Dobbs goes undercover as a professor in a private college at the University of Cambridge, England. Maisie’s assignment is to report to Scotland Yard’s Special Branch and the Secret Service any activity that would not be beneficial to Her Majesty’s government. It’s the late 1930s and pro-Hitler organizations are growing and making themselves known throughout the UK. When the founder and president of the college is murdered, Maisie’s assignment becomes increasingly more complicated.

Carol writes: The Collectors, book #2 in The Camel Club series, by David Baldacci, offers readers parallel storylines—a three-part con resulting in the theft of millions of dollars and a puzzling death at the Library of Congress—that converge in a murder investigation conducted by the Camel Club, an unofficial watchdog group whose aim is to keep the U.S. government accountable to the American people.

Carol writes: CIA operative Colette Cahill works undercover at the American Embassy in Budapest, where she runs one of the most valuable assets the U.S. has acquired.

Carol writes: Dorothy L. Sayers’s atmospheric Gaudy Night takes place among the famed spires of Oxford University. A classic Golden Age mystery, rich in intriguing characters, filled with twists and turns.