MADreads

Micaela Vargas is a police officer in Stockholm. She struggles to gain respect from her mostly white, male colleagues. First because she's a woman, second because she's a Chilean immigrant whose family came to Sweden as political refugees, and third because she grew up in the projects and has a brother who is operating on the other side of the law. None of that stops her from trying. She's determined to move up in the ranks and thus is happy to be assigned to the team investigating the death of an Afghani asylum-seeker who had become a popular youth soccer coach.

In 1952 San Francisco, police detective Evander "Andy" Mills has been able to keep his sexual orientation, as a gay man, under wraps, until now. A raid on a gay nightclub has caught him in its web and he's lost his job and every "friend" he thought he had on the force. At a loss as to what comes next, he's contemplating a very bad decision while half-tanked in a bar, when he's approached by a glamorous woman named Pearl. She offers a deal he can't pass up. Pearl tells him that her wife, soap magnate, Irene Lamontaine has died and Pearl thinks her death was murder.

Lizzie Oullette has been found dead and no one in her rural Maine town seems to care. It's only when it becomes clear that her husband Dwayne is the one who likely murdered her that people start to show an interest. Dwayne was an admired member of the community until he hooked up with town outcast Lizzie. So if he did kill her? Maybe it's for the best. At least that's what investigator Ian Bird is able to glean from the townsfolk. That and somehow Lizzie's death is connected to a Adrienne Richards, a glamorous blonde Instagram influencer who'd been renting a house from Lizzie.

A boy returns from school hurt that a friend drew a picture of their group and he has eyes like two lines stretched across his face. The others have big, round eyes with green, blue, brown or black irises. His Baba stood him in front of a mirror and said, “Your eyes rise to the skies and speak to the stars. The comets and constellations show you their secrets, and your eyes can foresee the future.