The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan by Elliot Ackerman (Penguin). The second account of that war that the column has covered. Wesley Morgan’s The Hardest Place, a year ago, was more general; Ackerman’s focus is more on the last phases and the awful aftermath of the war. Ackerman, a prolific and accomplished writer, spent a good deal of time on the ground there (as did Morgan), as a frontline soldier and as a CIA paramilitary officer. He produces here a sternly judgmental account; clear-eyed judging is required for America to integrate and digest the lessons to be learned from that war, especially its impulsive ending and the abandonment of all too many of our local allies. There is even reason to hope that the lessons will forestall our entering another involvement of that kind. That we have serious students of such things on the level of these two writers creates hope for that, in at least one reader.

Heat 2 by Michael Mann + Meg Gardiner (Morrow). A trick title for a terrific and very satisfying sequel — to a movie, Michael Mann’s Heat, of course, an original screenplay of his, and not based on a book. It was a hit movie; this is a big book, expanding the movie’s storytelling in both directions, before and after that of Heat. If you know Mann’s films — Heat, Miami Vice, Public Enemies, for a few — you’ll know to expect, here on the page as there on the screen: intelligent, dark and violent, and compelling and satisfying.

Are You Sara? by S. C. Lalli (Morrow). A very strong thriller, by a well-established romance novelist suddenly entirely at home, and well in control, in crime and suspense (we’ll recall that she’s not the first to do that well). There are two Saras, here (well, one’s a Sarah, the other’s a Sarawati, known as Sara). They both call a cab from a bar at the end of an evening of drinking (for Sarah) and bartending (for Sara, who’s also a law student). Our POV character, Sara the bartender, falls asleep in her cab; when the driver wakens her, she finds herself in a posh neighborhood, evidently Sarah’s — they seem both to have taken the wrong cab. Sara has to walk home. Where she finds, on her doorstep, Sarah, dead, clearly murdered. Was that supposed to be her, Sara (the two are physically similar)? And that’s just the first question that arises.

The War Librarian by Addison Armstrong (Putnam). Another trade paperback original, a big book, entertaining historical fiction, almost two novels interlaced. It is two distinct timelines, presenting women volunteers in the first world war, in Europe, and the first women admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy in the 1970s (who were not welcomed by their classmates). Armstrong manages the structure beautifully, so that thematic consistencies echo clearly and the struggles of those two distinct small groups of women, warmly presented, make one meaningful, satisfying story.