President Trump appointed his former personal lawyer Will Scharf as White House counsel. Maggie Haberman, our White House correspondent, explains how Scharf might help the president avoid congressional oversight at a critical time.

Can our Book Review editor, Tina Jordan, guess thrillers from their first sentence? In this game we explore a few of the books from The New York Times’s “50 Best Thrillers of the 21st Century” list; and learn a bit more about why opening sentences are so important to get people reading.