IP Picks🔎: An Undercover Cop in MLK's Entourage

➕ A haunted NYC apartment, a swashbuckling adventure and a life-changing trip to Paris

SPY STORY Jesse Jackson (far right) shown on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel from the same angle of the famous photo of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, 50 years after his death. A new book explores the life of an undercover cop who infiltrated the Civil Rights Movement. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

Welcome to The Optionist. As always, thanks for reading along.

It’s great to hear that the entertainment industry is springing back to life — from the return of late-night talk shows to Wednesday’s news that writers rooms for Dick Wolf’s shows are starting back up. (I heard Wolf was thisclose to thinking he might have to scrap the entire upcoming season for his trio of Chicago shows).

A couple of odds and ends before we get to the main course. First up, it’s Banned Books Week — a celebration of reading and the defense of artistic freedom. I love it. This year’s theme is “Let Freedom Ring” and the honorary chair is LeVar Burton, a perfect choice given his long run hosting the PBS show Reading Rainbow. You can find the list of the most challenged books of 2022 here. (No surprise that the most contested ones all deal with sex and sexuality🤦‍♀️.)

It was ironic that this story popped up this week: A book about Jamal Khashoggi and his murder by Washington Post writer Karen Attiah has been pulled by Murdoch-owned publisher HarperCollins, just days after an early excerpt appeared in the Post. (The actual book wasn’t scheduled for publication until May.) Based on her tweets, Attiah’s not sure what happened either and HarperCollins isn’t commenting for now. There’s not enough known to even speculate about what’s going on, but it’s a worrying sign when a book about a controversial and influential country like Saudi Arabia suddenly gets dropped. It’s worth keeping an eye on this story.

On to this week’s picks, which are a super fun mix of horror, history and humor! The rundown:

• A Civil Rights Movement-set drama in the vein of The Americans.

• An upscale drama about a woman who fulfills her dying mother’s wish to travel to Paris and discovers a life for herself that she never dreamed possible.

• A supernatural horror thriller about a couple who inherited a plush NYC apartment only to discover the building may be haunted by dangerous spirits.

• A comedy detailing a couple’s travels to America’s national parks.

• A swashbuckling adventure drama centered on the final voyage of famed explorer Captain James Cook.