Weekend picks for book lovers: Wesley Snipes' 'Talon'

What should you read this weekend? Paste BN’s picks for book lovers include a new novel by actor Wesley Snipes, and two tasty mysteries for teens.

Talon of God by Wesley Snipes and Ray Norman; Harper Voyager, 368 pp.; fiction

Got a cloaked warrior fighting evil at night and carrying one seriously epic sword? Naturally, you need Wesley Snipes involved.

Talon of God isn’t a Blade movie, and Snipes isn’t playing an action-film character. Instead, the actor makes his debut as a novelist with a supernatural adventure about the war between angels and demons — literal and metaphorical — on the streets of Chicago.

Talon centers on young ER doctor Lauryn Jefferson, who’s become estranged from her strict Baptist preacher dad and rapper younger brother.

After getting off a long shift at the hospital one night, she encounters something surreal: one of her patients, a homeless man, turns into an otherworldly monster. Then the situation doubles down on the weird when a tall stranger on a motorcycle walks into her life and saves the day with old-school weaponry and holy water.

Lauryn and the stoic protector named Talon unearth a plot to use a sulfur-laced drug additive laced to infect the populace of the Windy City and ready them for a mass demon possession.

Paste BN says *** out of four stars. “Snipes has just as much punch with a keyboard as with his fists... the realm of urban fantasy has an impressive new disciple.”

And Then There Were Four by Nancy Werlin; Dial Books, 416 pp.; fiction

A clever title play on the Agatha Christie book, And Then There Were Four focuses on five teens at a prestigious academy who are brought together, only to have their meeting place cave in on them. After one dies in a car accident, the survivors begin to suspect their parents and relatives.

Paste BN says *** stars. “An unpredictable adventure through New York, leading to an emotional climax.”

One of Us Is Lying  by Karen M. McManus; Delacorte, 368 pp.; fiction

What if one of the Breakfast Club kids never made it out of detention? That’s the potboiling premise of this teen mystery, which centers on Ivy League-bound Bronwyn, popular girl Addy, all-star jock Cooper, bad boy Nate and school gossip Simon. Things get crazy when Simon dies suddenly in front of them.

Paste BN says *** stars. “This is no ordinary whodunit…surprising and relevant.”

A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols by Tim Marshall; Scribner, 272 pp.; non-fiction

Explains where many of the flags that capture the world’s imagination come from and why.

Paste BN ***½ stars. “Entertaining… (Marshall) writes with cool drollery.”

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay; Harper, 320 pp.; non-fiction

The acclaimed fiction writer and essayist peels back the layers to reveal the trauma that led her to, at her heaviest, weigh 577 pounds.

Paste BN says ***½ stars. “Wrenching …a thing of raw beauty.”

Contributing reviewers: Brian Truitt, Ray Locker, Charisse Jones