“Playing For Payback”

Lainey Davis

Bookcase Media, $15.99

Since their founding in 1967, the Pittsburgh Penguins have had their fair share of ups and downs — but championships didn’t start coming their way until they drafted a kid from Montreal named Mario Lemieux.

Seven years after Lemieux’s 1984 selection, the Stanley Cup resided in Pittsburgh; the Pens have lived in the hearts of Pittsburghers ever since. It comes as no surprise, then, that hockey in Pittsburgh is at the center of two recent and very different novels. Alder Stag of the Pittsburgh Fury is playing the most important game of his career when suddenly the Kiss Cam flashes images of his boyfriend passionately making out with another man — the boyfriend of the team’s new dentist, Dr. Lena Sinclair.

Dazed by this very public betrayal, the puck gets past Alder. Just like that, the season is over, and his love life has capsized. Lainey Davis’ light and sexy “Playing for Payback” is an arena-sized romantic romp.

Alder and Lena join forces to exact a bit of revenge on their exes only to discover just how quickly things can heat up on the ice. Personal body image and human sexuality can be thorny subjects, but Davis treats her characters with respect and, in doing so, offers a very reassuring look at love and romance.

“Fine Young People”

front view of Blank book cover white .

Anna Bruno

Algonquin Books, $29

“Fine Young People” is a thriller set in the monied halls of Sewickley prep school St. Ignatius, where star hockey player Woolf Whiting has died under mysterious circumstances.

Eighteen years later, Frankie Northrup and her best friend Shiv reopen the case as part of their senior-year Community Journalism class project. Bruno combines Nancy Drew sleuthing with the nuanced social commentary of a Henry James novel to offer up something deeper than a typical page-turner.

“Fine Young People” is as much an interrogation of class and wealth as it is a murder mystery.