Plot Twist

It all began decades ago during Lupica’s days at Boston College, when he picked up the first Spenser page-turner at a local bookstore. “I realized immediately this was different from what anyone else was doing,” recalled Lupica, then a scribe for the campus newspaper. Years later, as a prolific sports columnist, ESPN commentator, and novelist in his own right, Lupica met Parker on the job. They bonded over shared loves of baseball and storytelling. Parker passed away in 2010.

In 2018, Lupica, who separately cowrites James Patterson thrillers, began writing new entries in Parker’s Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone series. Eventually, he took over Spenser too. Hot Property, Lupica’s second Spenser outing, revolves around a high-stakes bidding war for a coveted piece of Boston real estate, with a timely dash of political corruption.

Lupica said he found it easy to slip into Spenser’s identity. What makes the character endure after fifty-two novels and counting, he said, is simple: “He’s funny, he lives by a code, and he wants to make things right—even when he has to cross lines to do it.” That sense of honor, humor, and New England grit runs through Lupica’s own story too. “Everything I’ve achieved professionally started with the fact that I’m a Boston College man,” he said. Now, as the torchbearer for one of crime fiction’s most legendary characters, that story has come full circle. ◽

White Mulberry by Rosa Kwon Easton, JD’94

Easton’s debut novel is a tender portrait of Miyoung, an eleven-year-old girl who leaves a life of poverty in 1930s Korea to build a more promising future in Japan. As she enters adulthood, Miyoung navigates struggles reflecting the real-life experiences of Easton’s grandmother, including religious persecution and the suppression of her Korean identity.

Inventing the Boston Game by Mike Cronin, academic director of Boston College Ireland, and Kevin Tallec Marston

In the 1860s, a group of private school classmates, calling themselves the Oneida Football Club, met on Boston Common to play a game they later claimed to be the first example of organized American football. Was it really, though? In this thoroughly researched work of nonfiction, the authors attempt to parse football’s true origins and examine whether the Oneida players’ upper-class status allowed them to manufacture an inflated legacy.

Justice Under God by Christopher J. Muse, BC adjunct professor of law

In 1986, the Massachusetts man Bobby Joe Leaster was exonerated after fifteen years of wrongful imprisonment for a murder and armed robbery he did not commit. In Justice Under God, Muse, a retired Massachusetts Superior Court judge, details his and his father’s nine years of pro bono appeal work on behalf of Leaster, whose story was instrumental in thwarting efforts to reinstate capital punishment in the state. 

Eurotrash translation by Daniel Bowles, BC associate professor

Bowles’s English translation of Christian Kracht’s acclaimed, tragicomic Swiss novel has been heralded in the Washington Post and longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize. Originally written in German, Eurotrash follows a young man as he grapples with his family’s dark past, including its ties to Nazism, while on a cross-continental road trip with his elderly mother after her release from a psychiatric institute. —Elizabeth Clemente