Claudia Lin, an online dating detective in the age of AI, is hunting once again through a dark cybersphere of tech systems in “The Rivals,” the second novel in a new mystery series by Jane Pek.

Pek has given the mystery genre fresh trappings — a vivid New York City landscape of chatbots and apps that can create chaos or sniff out fraud, and a delightfully plucky new sleuth, who is in her mid-20s, Asian American and gay.

Claudia and Becks Rittel are the co-owners of the fact-checking firm Veracity, which helps clients of giant matchmaking platforms make sure the strangers they meet for dates are not unscrupulous liars or worse. “The Rivals” opens with a couple of customers. One wants Veracity to make sure his new lady friend is all she claims to be; the other anxiously asks for help taking down a false online gay-dating profile that could ruin his life.

Claudia takes on both projects, despite Becks’ protests and disparagement. In short order, both cases present Claudia with false turns, odd developments and scary possibilities. These twists make “The Rivals” a modern mystery unfolding amid synthetic culprits — cyberworld bots known as “synths” — that can wreck real lives.

Pek adds a few vital human ingredients to the story’s digital mix. One is Claudia’s striving but dysfunctional family that adds sparks to the narrative throughout. Pek also makes neighborhoods and go-to sites of Manhattan Brooklyn and other city environs an integral and appealing part of the story.

Pek writes with wit and AI savvy. At times “The Rivals” unfolds with so much tech-heavy dialogue that it can be hard to follow. But Claudia is a winning new entry in the field of modern serial detectives. With the freshness of Pek’s staging of online love and death, a third entry in the series will be welcome. — Kendal Weaver, Associated Press

To use a word that appears often in the novel, “Time of the Child” is a miracle.

Niall Williams’ gorgeous, wry and humane book is set in the fictional Irish hamlet of Faha, where much of his work takes place. It’s 1962 and nearing Christmas, which is important because the events of the book recall the life of the figure for whom Christmas is named. A baby is found outside, dies, then comes back to life. And the question of who will accept the child hovers over the rest of the book.

Williams has an extraordinary gift for describing Faha, and he’s equally good on character details, such as a trio of sisters whose views of the world were established as soon as they met their first bottles of milk: “Sophie who near-slept while she fed, Charlotte, who would not take the bottle, and Ronnie who reached up to try and hold it herself.”

Ronnie is the one the book is most concerned with. When the baby girl is found, she’s brought to Ronnie and her father, Dr. Jack Troy, who practices out of their home. Jack sees how important the child is to Ronnie, so they try to keep her secret, rather than consign her to government care.

It’s an essentially realistic book that lovingly observes the minutiae of its characters’ day-to-day lives but there’s an element of quiet magic afoot, too.

The subject of the child’s biological parentage is barely broached, as if it’s understood she was destined to be placed in a Faha alley. And, while the narrator of “Time of the Child” is never revealed, it’s clear it’s someone who knows the people well and who slyly makes room in the story for its readers.

It’s impossible to keep a baby secret forever, and a single woman in 1960s Ireland wouldn’t get custody of a child.

But things resolve themselves in a finale in which a community of people gather for Christmas Mass. I read it multiple times to figure out how Williams achieved the emotion and truth of that scene. The answer to “How is this going to end?” is, “Perfectly.” — Chris Hewitt, Minnesota Star Tribune