One of my favorite reads of the summer was Gary Phillips’ “The Haul,” a clever heist novel that begins when the thief is a precocious, streetwise kid and shifts to the takedown of an Elon Musk-like billionaire who hides his money in a bunker. Wait until you find out what’s waiting in the safe when the thieves break in!

My second delicious heist novel comes from Grace D. Li, who concocts an intricate art heist undertaken by Chinese students bent on repatriating stolen work from western museums.  It’s called “Portrait of a Thief.”

And my last must-read heist is the great S.A. Cosby’s “Blacktop Wasteland,” the story of a one-time, gone-straight getaway driver who just can’t miss the last big score.

Great horror pushes readers to ask difficult questions of themselves. In Craig DiLouie’s “Episode Thirteen,” the best it can come up with is, “Is now really the best time to write a journal entry?”

Found footage horror is a tricky format to pull off in a medium with actual footage. “Episode Thirteen” takes a different approach, recounting the fate of a reality television crew through transcripts, interviews and lots of journal entries, with results more irritating than terrifying.

“Fade to Black” is a ghost hunting series on its last legs, with mounting pressure from producers and crew members who can’t stand each other. But they see new life for the show in the form of Foundation House, an abandoned manor in the mountains of Virginia that was once home to a paranormal research project that went haywire. Once shooting begins, things go bump in the night, and the book hits all the familiar beats you think it would.

“Episode Thirteen” isn’t safe from typical found footage trappings, either — especially the old chestnut, “Why are you still filming?” Throughout the story, we get journal entries by each character, because the show needs bonus material for its website (something that would’ve felt dated when the book was released in 2023). And counter to just about every college student who’s been forced to write a discussion post, these characters love their journals, even when they’re moments from their doom. And yet, all that documentation can’t keep the last couple chapters from being incomprehensible.

A big reason this book did nothing for me might be my own fault. I listened to the audiobook, so in lieu of changing text formats, the production is fully voiced. The actors don’t always seem to get the right context of what their characters are feeling, so tension is rarely a going concern. Then again, they were probably doing their best with the material they had.

But with characters this flat, scares this mild and a format that’s more frustrating than fun, trust this isn’t exactly appointment viewing.