As with Dumas’s original, the central question is: What is a life truly worth? Status and power are easy metrics, but they’re incomplete — how do you redress a lost love, or broken friendships, or shattered kinship? Quynh intends to pay back violence with violence, but Hoà helps her realize that perhaps justice looks more like claiming happiness for herself instead. In A SHOT IN THE DARK (Dell, 320 pp., paperback, $17), Victoria Lee brings us back to the here and now. She works out her homecoming jitters by hooking up with a hot trans dude at a queer club — only to discover in class the next morning that he’s actually her hot trans photography professor, Wyatt Cole.

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Persons: Quynh, Hoà, Victoria Lee, Ely Cohen, he’s, Wyatt Cole, Wyatt Locations: L.A, New York