IP Picks🔎: An International Corporate Espionage Thriller Involving ... Soda Cans!

➕ a sweet second-chance rom-com and a John le Carré-meets-'Yellowstone' novel

CANNED RESPONSE? Shannon You is interviewed by the FBI after being accused of stealing the secrets to making a soda can to build a competing company in China (United States District Court Eastern District of Tennessee, Greeneville/Bloomberg Media)

Welcome to The Optionist! We’re coming out a day early this week with Memorial Day Weekend and the start of summer upon us. We’re going to jump right into this week’s pick without further introduction.

We’ve got a nice mix that includes one of the best rom-coms I’ve come across in a while, a great thriller that throws back to the 1950s with Russian spies infiltrating America’s nuclear arms program, and a twisty story of corporate espionage. The full lineup:

• A thriller that connects a series of murders in present-day Nevada to a Russian spy who infiltrated America’s nuclear-testing program in the 1950s.

• A rom-com centered on a middle-aged dad who, with a little push from his teenage son, strikes up a romance with the reclusive rock star he had a crush on in his youth.

• A memoir about growing up in and getting out of a doomsday cult.

• A corporate espionage thriller about a woman who tried to steal Coke’s trade secret, and the Chinese government’s role in the scandal.

• A procedural about a cop who goes undercover to bust fellow officers working in cahoots with local gangs.