Mysteries Every Thinking Woman Should Read

When it comes to solving a mysteriously timed murder—and life in general—logic says that if an impossibility is indeed, impossible, then a real solution must exist. But what role does intuition play in a world governed by more than just simple logic? In our favorite Catherine Shaw mystery, The Library Paradox, mathematical proofs and murder collide after academically inclined private detective Vanessa Weatherburn is called to investigate the death of a notoriously anti-Semitic professor at King's College. It's London in 1896, yet her struggles are familiar: She must wade through the media rancor and cultural and gender biases of the time to solve her case—all while facing the pull of family responsibilities. At the heart of the mystery is a key contradiction in logic that Vanessa needs to piece together to save an innocent man from conviction and her yearning "to touch the rougher spots of life's texture" leads her through a complicated genealogical history and into the heart the city's immigrant Hasidic community. But it's the author's training as a mathematician and her sensitivity as a writer and observer that take us, puzzle piece by puzzle piece, on a journey into humanity's most hidden motivations.—Tiffany Sun