Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation by Zaakir Tameez (Henry Holt and Co.). Reviewed by Eugene L. Meyer. “Sumner also could be confounding. While abhorring slavery, he defended the U.S. Constitution that allowed it. A staunch Unionist, he nonetheless was censured by the Massachusetts House of Representatives for opposing the wearing of uniforms to celebrate the Union victory. And although a Republican, he was not strictly a party man. He insisted the Civil War was being fought to end slavery, while fellow Republican Abraham Lincoln — worried about losing the slave-owning border states — claimed it was all about preserving the Union. He lobbied Lincoln to emancipate the slaves before he was ready to do so. But Sumner revered Lincoln and, the author writes, was at the president’s bedside as he lay dying from an assassin’s bullet.”

A Case of Mice and Murder: The Trials of Gabriel Ward by Sally Smith (Bloomsbury Publishing). Reviewed by Paul D. Pearlstein. “The Temple and its environs comprise a unique municipal sovereignty called Liberties, not unlike the Vatican in Rome. This means London police may not enter the grounds without permission. To maximize the Temple’s privacy regarding the homicide, its brilliant but long-cloistered barrister, Gabriel Ward, is assigned to handle the investigation. After all, it was he who stumbled onto the face-down corpse while entering his chambers. With this unwelcome assignment — ‘He was the very last sort of man to become an amateur sleuth’ — the reluctant Ward becomes our Sherlock Holmes as we watch him learn the craft.”

Here Beside the Rising Tide: Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead, and an American Awakening by Jim Newton (Random House). Reviewed by Daniel de Visé. “Newton isn’t a music writer, per se. I remember him as a superb police reporter at the L.A. Times in the O.J. era. And he’s written books about Eisenhower and Earl Warren. Here, he delivers a sociopolitical work about a musician. His thesis: The man and his band led and shaped the counterculture in its decades-long battle against various police departments and politicians. Newton shows the Dead playing a central role in many iconic gatherings of their era, from Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests to the big rock festivals at Monterey, Woodstock, and Altamont.”

Wayward Girls: A Novel by Susan Wiggs (William Morrow). Reviewed by Marcie Geffner. “Susan Wiggs’ latest novel, Wayward Girls, isn’t the first about the Catholic Church’s notorious Magdalene laundries, where thousands of innocent women and girls were forced to perform years of unpaid labor. What’s different about Wiggs’ story, though, is that her fictional Home of the Good Shepherd isn’t located in 1800s Dublin. Instead, it’s in Buffalo, New York, in 1968, where a real-life Magdalene laundry once existed.”

Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama by Alexis Okeowo (Henry Holt & Co.). Reviewed by Shelby Smoak. “Alabama is the hero here, as the author filters its history through the lives of everyday people mostly from minority groups. Its landscape is often tagged as ‘too racists, too religious, too backward,’ but Okeowo hopes to shine a light on the stories of Alabama left out of this ‘official narrative.’ She sets up her task by asking what happens ‘[w]hen the little-known, the inconvenient, and the unexpected parts of the story are presented as the story itself?’”

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