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A selection of summaries from The New York Times Book Review:

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By
JOUMANA KHATIB
, New York Times

A selection of summaries from The New York Times Book Review:

A KIND OF FREEDOM, by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton. (Counterpoint, $16.95.) Three generations of a black family make their way in New Orleans, and for all the peril and disappointment in their lives, the story dwells on endurance, not damage. Sexton is a New Orleans native, and her feeling for the city’s language and pulse is one of the book’s true pleasures. Times reviewer Jesse McCarthy called her “a writer of uncommon nerve and talent.”

SECRECY WORLD: Inside the Panama Papers, Illicit Money Networks, and the Global Elite, by Jake Bernstein. (Picador, $20.) Bernstein, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, draws on the trove of leaked documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca to expose how the wealthy hide income and evade taxes through offshore bank accounts and shell companies in island havens.

WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW, by Joann Chaney. (Flatiron, $16.99.) This debut novel offers three perspectives on a serial killer, Jacky Seever: that of his wife, who has turned a blind eye to his crimes and remains devoted to him; that of a former journalist who made her career covering him; and that of a police officer who is obsessed with him. When a copycat killer emerges years later, the lives of all three are stirred up again.

DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR? A Practical Guide to Writing Well in the Modern Age, by Harold Evans. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $16.99.) A longtime editor and writer offers entertaining and illuminating tips (think “Don’t be a bore” and “Please don’t feed the zombies”) for clear, concise prose. Later, he makes a case for why excellent writing is a moral issue, not simply a question of aesthetics. Times reviewer Jim Holt praised the book, saying, “I wish I had the editorial chops to produce such an authoritative guide myself.”

THE LAST EQUATION OF ISAAC SEVERY: A Novel in Clues, by Nova Jacobs. (Touchstone, $16.) Soon after the death of her grandfather, a famous mathematician, Hazel obtains a mysterious letter from him directing her to track down and preserve some of his most important work. It turns out she’s not the only one on the hunt, and his last equation could have potentially calamitous results for the Severy family.

THE NEWCOMERS: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in America, by Helen Thorpe. (Scribner, $18.) Thorpe spent a year in a class for “newcomers” — teenage refugees from the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia and Central America — at South High School in Denver. As they learn to make new lives in the United States, they struggle with a xenophobic political climate while finding connection with one another.

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