The plan was to read a few pages, maybe the first chapter, and then put “The House Hunt” down and read an earlier book by its author, British crime and mystery writer C.M. Ewan (also know as Chris Ewan, creator of the “Good Thief” series).

Turns out Ewan’s latest thriller didn’t want to be put down.

If I’d been wearing something with lapels, the book would have grabbed me by them and not let go. It might even have shook me a little. It begged to be finished in one sitting, but I wasn’t able to oblige it. It took me a couple of days — which is even better. Is there anything quite like a lapel-grabbing book, waiting to be read?

Anybody who has put their house on the market will relate to “House Hunt,” especially the anxiety that accompanies the process, and more especially if you’re a Londoner named Lucy who has finished renovating a house your boyfriend Sam inherited. The two did most of the work themselves, skimping on nothing. Despite all the sweat equity, they are selling because they’ve decided to leave London for good: “A clean slate. Starting again.”

From the first sentence, you know something’s not right, that the anxiety surrounding this real estate transaction is in a class by itself: “Paranoia stalks me when I’m vacuuming the house and Sam is out.” Lucy is readying the house for a viewing but she is also readying herself. Her attack of nerves seems to be connected with her mysterious references to “what happened to me.”

Lucy doesn’t like being alone; she likes being with strangers even less. Her plan was to go to a nearby cafe while her estate agent, Bethany, showed the potential buyer around the house. Then Bethany calls. Leaves a voicemail. She’s running late. The viewing is in 15 minutes.

Lucy supposes she could cancel, but their “debts were spiraling” and she and Sam need this potential buyer to make an offer. She’ll just have to deal, although it won’t be easy. Lucy does what she has hoped never to have to do: She lets a stranger into her house.

Ewan is adept at building the trust necessary to prolong suspense, among characters and the reader. Lucy is suspicious and fearful right out of the gate, so Ewan must provide a path for her — and us — to move forward. (The sane thing to do, after all, is for her to reschedule the viewing.) He does this by alternating Lucy’s first-person chapters with third-person chapters involving Sam, a psychological and behavioral science lecturer at the London School of Economics.

As Lucy shows Donovan the house, Sam carefully leads a group of five people confronting their phobias. The juxtaposition grounds the action even while Ewan keeps the tension thrumming, the sense of unease never letting up.

Even though the plot occasionally strains credulity, the short chapters — I do love a short chapter — kept pushing me forward, egging me on to read just one more. And so I did, collecting a bit of real estate wisdom along the way: If you’re selling your house and the person looking at it never takes their gloves off, be very afraid.

The House Hunt

By: C.M. Ewan.

Publisher: Grand Central, 423 pages, $30.

©2024 The Minnesota Star Tribune. Visit at startribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

“A lot of my designs stem from the imagination I created while growing up in Baltimore. … No matter what or where I was at, or what part of the city I was in, you can always tell that identifying and expressing who you are through your garments is very important,” said Cromartie, 33, who now lives in Los Angeles but once called Baltimore’s Waverly neighborhood home.

“I love seeing some of the buildings, like abandoned buildings or like industrial buildings, where you can see how the building was held up.”

With last year’s Season 20 “Project Runway” All-Stars win under his belt and clients including Lizzo, Victoria Monet, Jennifer Hudson and Ciara, Cromartie is returning to his hometown for a talk about his journey as a designer at the Baltimore Museum of Industry on Oct. 9. The event will kick off the museum’s new Labor + Innovation speaker series co-produced by Baltimore artist Cheyanne Zadia and moderated by Baltimore podcast producer Aaron Henkin, slated to run through June of next year.

“We really wanted this talk series to reflect industry leaders, everyday workers, and really tell human stories about the intersection of work and art,” said Brianne Mobley, the Baltimore Museum of Industry’s public engagement manager.

After Cromartie’s solo appearance, the lineup will feature multiple speakers coming together to offer insight on the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse on Dec. 3; women in the culinary arts on March 13; and AI technology on June 4.

Mobley said the series is inspired by the museum’s galleries and collections, including its garment loft exhibit, which focuses on Baltimore’s history of garment making.

Cromartie was preparing for the online debut of his fashion film “Brutal Cry” on Sept. 10 during New York Fashion Week when he spoke with The Baltimore Sun, and said the collection explores the topic of grief. His older sister, Chimere Faye Wall, died from colon cancer in 2022 after being diagnosed while he appeared on Season 17 of “Project Runway”; his new film and collection is about “releasing the burden of grief and rediscovering yourself.”

“To come home is kind of like a home run,” he said. “The timing of it is perfect.”

If you go

Bishme Cromartie’s two-hour talk at the Baltimore Museum of Industry will start at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 9 and is free via registration online. It will be preceded by a meet and greet for museum members at 5:30 p.m.

Adapted from the 2018 novel by Elin Hilderbrand, the plot kicks off at a Nantucket wedding hosted by the groom’s wealthy parents, played by Kidman and Liev Schreiber. Everything is elegant and photo-ready at the Winbury family’s waterfront estate. Then a dead body turns up in the water. The nuptials are postponed and the police bring in each person, one by one — guests, employees, members of the family — for questioning. How inconvenient for the Winburys, who are all about their gleaming facade, no matter how fake. This is a family that occasionally asks their nearest and dearest to sign NDAs, so their obsession with appearances and obfuscation complicates the investigation.

Kidman is at the top of her game here as a regal, glorious snob who is unflappable, but wound so tight she just might snap. She’s a famous writer of murder mysteries (ironic!) and she’s the one who makes this lifestyle possible. Her husband comes from family money that has since evaporated, so it’s her sizable income that’s paying the bills. (It’s unclear if anyone else in the family actually works.) The pressure to keep up appearances isn’t just about social class, but about maintaining their carefully crafted personas — the perfect couple of the title — that has been so lucrative for her as an author. Schreiber, with his perpetual stubble and sun-kissed complexion, embodies a guy who is both sexy and unbothered. Perpetually on vacation, he’s content to smoke pot all day and be everyone’s object of desire.

They have three sons — too dull to name or describe — and the dysfunctions of the family become the central drama. Dakota Fanning plays a mean girl who is deeply unhappy beneath it all — of course she is, she’s married to a dud waiting to cash in on his Winbury trust fund. Meghann Fahy is the maid of honor, and her performance is not unlike her turn on “The White Lotus” — sunny but hiding many secrets. That’s no insult to Fahy, she’s extremely good, but here’s hoping she doesn’t get typecast, she seems too talented for that. Eve Hewson plays the bride, who isn’t embraced by the family so much as tolerated and she brings a reluctant energy to the proceedings. Is this really all it’s cracked up to be? She’s down-to-earth and has modest origins that are a world away from this “stratospherically high rent district,” as the enclave of second (or third or fourth) homes is described in the novel.

The show has streamlined and tweaked the book, which means many of Hilderbrand’s droll observations about wealth have been excised (one of the Winbury’s cars, as seen through the eyes of the bride’s mother, “looks exactly like what people drive in across savannas of Africa on the Travel Channel”).

Changes are part and parcel of adaptation, and expected. But Netflix is treating the identity of the drowned person as a spoiler initially — first we must meet all the players at the rehearsal dinner on the beach before we find out which one turns up dead — whereas the book lays out this information from the start. The mystery of who has been killed, which we learn soon enough anyway, is so much less interesting than the how and why and whodunit of it all. I say all this to suggest that perhaps we (and by we, I mean producers and media executives) have put too much stock in the power of spoilers when, really, good storytelling is enough.

“The Perfect Couple” needn’t have worried. Entertainingly absorbing and beautiful to look at, the show (created by Jenna Lamia and directed by Susanne Bier) has “general audience” written all over it and is a great example of what the genre can be when it’s handled with skill and wit. It’s more or less an Agatha Christie manor house mystery given an American sensibility, and the resolution, which is just one of the many ways the Netflix series diverges from the book, is a massive improvement from the source material.

There is no primarily point-of-view character but Hewson’s bride might be the most vital; she’s underwritten (that’s an issue with most of the lineup here), but her growing suspicion of the family she plans to marry into prevents the show from becoming yet another exercise in wealthaganda. Her distrust is the necessary splash of cold water on the show’s aspirational trappings — she’s an outsider who sees how empty this all is, and has no problem voicing her concerns. She’s not just another hanger-on hoping to benefit from their largess and it’s the essential perspective usually missing in these kinds of shows.

“The Perfect Couple” — 3.5 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: Netflix

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.

There’s a lot more Keaton in the 36-years-later reboot “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” which pays off in terms of a great and versatile star’s screen time. But holy cats, is this movie disappointing! I mean really not good enough! Some people, Burton fans many of them, slag off Burton projects like the live-action “Dumbo” or the feature “Dark Shadows.”  While many disagree, given the wide but generally admiring critical response to “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” in its world premiere last week at the 81st Venice International Film Festival, this one, for me, ranks right down there with “Dumbo.” It is not enough to make a swole version of the first “Beetlejuice,” at somewhere around 14 times the original’s $15 million product budget. With the effects upgrades and joyless bombast taking over, did the comedy ever have a chance?

Now the mother of teenage Astrid (Jenna Ortega), ghost-friendly Lydia hosts a successful reality/talk show produced by her smarmy fiancee (Justin Theroux). The show is a haunted-house affair, featuring standoffs between supernatural and super-normal inhabitants of the same domiciles, with Lydia acting as “psychic mediator.” The tragic death of Lydia’s father leaves Astrid bereft and also skeptical: If mom’s TV shtick is genuine, why can’t she make afterlife contact with Astrid’s grandfather?

When Beetlejuice enters the story, he’s still smitten with Lydia. Beyond that, his ex-wife Delores (Monica Bellucci), determined to exact revenge on her dirty dog of a former husband, goes about sucking the souls out of humans who get in her way. There’s more to the screenplay by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, including Astrid meeting a sweet fellow outsider (Arthur Conti), and Willem Dafoe’s deceased but lively detective — an actor who played a detective when he was alive, so why stop now?

Burton’s design teams remain among the finest commercial film creatives working, and there are some visual ideas and images in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” that hit that elusive sweet spot between the macabre and the wittily macabre only a Burton movie can manage. When Keaton sails into a flashback reverie about how he and Delores met and then broke up, it’s depicted in the operatically intense style of an Italian gallo horror melodrama. Elsewhere we get bits of the cramped “Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” German Expressionism in the scenic design, which is amusing. More clinically impressive than amusing: the sight of Bellucci’s formerly dismembered Delores reattaching her own limbs with a staple gun.

What’s missing is not simply surprise, or the pleasurable shock of a new kind of ghost comedy. It’s the near-complete absence of verbal wit, all the more frustrating since Keaton is ready to play, and he’s hardly alone. The legendarily gifted Catherine O’Hara returns as Lydia’s stepmother Delia, as haughty as ever. But we keep waiting for the jokes to land — to do their job, in other words. Without a fresh take on familiar material, director Burton makes do with his own detours and let’s-try-this-for-a-while segments, including a torturous musical sequence backed by the song “MacArthur Park” that goes on approximately forever. Then there’s a “Soul Train” riff, which feels way, way off, taste-wise and big-ending-dance-party wise.

It can’t hold a candle, in other words, to the happy ending of the first “Beetlejuice,” which found human and otherworld cohabitants of the same old house on the hill living in peace and harmony, with Harry Belafonte’s rendition of the Calypso classic “Jump in the Line” providing the backbeat. I’m sure this sequel will do well enough. But it’s a helluva comedown, and seeing “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” in a huge opening-night crowd at the Venice festival, I didn’t hear much in the way of actual laughter, proving that a couple of hundred million can buy you almost anything. Almost.

“Beetle Beetlejuice” — 1.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for violent content, macabre and bloody images, strong language, some suggestive material and brief drug use)

Running time: 1:44

How to watch: Premieres in theaters Sept. 5

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

Based on Mick Herron’s Slough House book series — named for the dingy London headquarters where the slow horses have been banished —  Season 4 adapts the 2017 novel “Spook Street.” It begins with a bang, as David Cartwright (Jonathan Pryce) blows away someone he believes has infiltrated his home. Who the hell did he just kill?

Lamb (Gary Oldman) arrives and, with typical unemotional disinterest, IDs the body. Chances are, he’s lying about whose corpse lies splayed in that bathtub. It’s a choice that has all the hallmarks of the simple but necessary subterfuge that is Lamb’s stock in trade.

Meanwhile, a car bomb has exploded in London and Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas, formidable as ever) is tasked with finding out what happened and preventing any further incidents. One of the long-running jokes of the series is that, as MI5’s No. 2, the top job remains forever just out of reach. That means she’s stuck answering to intellectually inferior men and she can’t help but cop an attitude in her own pristine way. But it’s never clear what drives her. Does she actually care about preventing carnage and something as squishy as … human lives? “There isn’t a big picture to running an intelligence agency,” she sighs, “it’s just putting out fires every bloody day.” Maybe she’s just obsessed with the job and the power it confers.

Somehow the car bomb and that death in David Cartwright’s home are connected, which necessitates a sojourn to France, where someone has tried to raise a small army of killers from birth. For what purpose? Unclear. But this ragtag paramilitary operation has fallen apart now that its members have grown into adults. What remains are just a few thugs, but their leader (Hugo Weaving) has an important connection to old man Cartwright and lingering resentments have a way of, well, lingering. Weaving is especially good as an entirely realistic villain, playing him with an American accent and an American sense of entitlement. It is a wonderfully grounded contrast to his similarly nefarious Agent Smith from “The Matrix” franchise. A more complex performance, too.

If the show’s third season was unusually obsessed with guns, the violence here erupts with more thought and narrative purpose and it doesn’t overstay its welcome. As a series, “Slow Horses” doesn’t offer tightly plotted, clockwork spy stories; think too deeply about any of the details and the whole thing threatens to fall apart. But on a scene-by-scene basis, the writing is such a delicious combination of wry and tension-filled, and the cumulative effect is wonderfully entertaining. Spies have to deal with petty office politics like everyone else!

Even so, I remain unconvinced the show knows what to do with its various slow horses. Outside of River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), who is intense and droll, they are too one-dimensional to justify their screen time. The rancid charisma of Lamb (who seems slightly less putrid this season; he’s still a greasy mess, but the dark overcoat he wears pulls him together in a way that his rumpled raincoat never did) and Taverner’s wily gamesmanship do much of the heavy lifting. Oldman and Thomas are the kind of seasoned performers who bring real vitality to their knives-out dynamic, which more or less repeats itself each season. That’s not a complaint. “Slow Horses” doesn’t pretend that the series or its characters need to evolve in order to remain interesting. Tackling a new case each season, while keeping the same format and framework, is enormously satisfying when done well. And it’s one of the few shows that has avoided the dreaded one or two year delay between seasons that has become standard for streaming. Instead, it provides the kind of reliability that has become increasingly rare. It probably helps that each season is based on one of Herron’s books.

A consistent theme in “Slow Horses” is that the younger generation — even the non-screwups at The Park, Slough House’s upscale counterpart — aren’t especially good at this spy stuff. At least, they’re no match for the cagey instincts and hard-won experience of Lamb and Taverner and anyone else who cut their teeth during the Cold War. It’s not that the old guard are invulnerable, they’re just smarter somehow. The newer generation? One bad guy manages to pull off an ambush that thwarts all their training. Herron and the show aren’t just cynical about MI5’s corruption, they’re cynical about the agency’s ability to do anything even remotely resembling the job at hand.

“Slow Horses” Season 4 — 3 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: Apple TV+

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.

Until recently, NA offerings weren’t widely available at bars. But that’s changing both in response to shifts in consumers’ drinking habits and broader education about no- and low-ABV products, categories that continue to grow. Gone are the days when folks who wanted a sober beverage needed to settle for something from the soda gun. Bars and restaurants, including fine dining establishments, now offer robust menus of NA cocktails, alcohol-free beers that stand up to the real thing, and even tasting menus that substitute traditional wine pairings for NA beverages.

“The thing you’re seeing and that is overdue is more sophisticated versions of non-alcoholic drinks. So rather than calling everything a virgin-something, we’re really starting to see the craft cocktail movement embrace non-alc,” said Jump, a celebrated local mixologist who served as the bar manager at the local Death & Co. in Denver for four years.

Jump is a leader in this space. This summer, she was named the Best U.S. Bar Mentor at the Spirited Awards, part of the prestigious Tales of the Cocktail conference in New Orleans, for her “unwavering efforts to prioritize health and wellness in the hospitality industry.”

Jump does that, in part, through Focus on Health, an organization she co-founded in 2020 that offers services to help enrich the lives of hospitality workers, from mentorship and scholarship programs to harm reduction training, non-alcoholic beverage consulting and even run clubs.

One of its initiatives is the Low/No Tour, a traveling pop-up series that educates bartenders on non-alcoholic products, how they’re made, and how they work in recipes. Education also gets put into practice in each city when the pop-up opens to the public and serves original no- and low-ABV cocktails. Proceeds from the events support other nonprofits in the space.

Started in 2023, inspiration for the No/Low Tour came from Jump and her partners’ desire to create more inclusive spaces within the hospitality sector – and not just for customers. The tour annually travels to about a half-dozen U.S. cities and coincides with other industry events, like Tales of Cocktail and Portland Cocktail Week, offering professionals an alternative to boozy bacchanalia.

“There are people in our industry who do not drink or do not want to drink as much, and we’re not creating opportunities for them to thrive when doing these big events,” Jump said.

Plus, the more bartenders become knowledgeable about non-alcoholic spirits and RTDs, the more options customers will have when they belly up. One that’s trending as of late is the multi-course tasting menu paired non-alcoholic beverages instead of wine.

In May, Jump collaborated with Denver restaurant Koko Ni on a seven-course dinner in which each dish featured a pairing from one of three different NA brands. For example, the restaurant served a flatiron steak and mushroom entree with a cocktail blending Three Spirit Nightcap NA elixir, marigold, chicory and beet. The asparagus appetizer came alongside a libation made with sencha tea, yuzu and Mahala, a botanical NA spirit.

Hansel Morales, Koko Ni’s beverage manager, and Jarmel Doss, beverage director for its parent company FAM Hospitality, developed the recipes for the non-alcoholic pairings. Much like a wine pairing, they sought to create profiles that both complemented and contrasted the food. They also wanted to hit flavors and textures that represented the ingenuity of alcoholic cocktails.

“We also had this intention that non-alcoholic (drinks) are not just sodas and juices. People want something that is lower sugar content, that feels more sophisticated and more elegant,” Morales said.

Koko Ni often partners with local breweries and distilleries on dinner pairings, and Morales hopes to do more NA ones soon, too. The demand is clearly there. Most stats point to Gen Z, which drinks less than its predecessors, but Jump said the majority of people who indulge in NA offerings also still consume alcoholic beverages — as much as 78%, she said citing proprietary data collected for the NA brand Ritual.

“If you’re a tasting restaurant and you’re offering pairings, but not non-alcoholic pairings, you’re just leaving money on the table,” Jump said.

While fine dining restaurants and upscale bars are currently leading the way, she hopes to see non-alcoholic drinks become menu mainstays because it makes good business sense. With an ever-growing inventory of products to choose from, including ready-to-drink cocktails, it’s never been easier to integrate into a bar program.

“Fifteen years ago, you couldn’t go to every bar and ask for a Last Word,” she said about the gin-based cocktail that has become popular in recent years. “You could argue 10 years from now, you go in anywhere and ask for a non-alcoholic Last Word.”

Many will be watching for Taylor Swift to appear in one of the stadium suites, too.

So will she or won’t she? Signs point to “yes.”

According to a report in The Athletic, “a source briefed on the security arrangements at Arrowhead Stadium” said Swift will attend.

And unfortunately, Baltimore fans know what happened the last time she showed up at a Ravens game.

The pop superstar became one of the Chiefs’ biggest fans last season, when she began a high-profile romance with tight end Travis Kelce. He had failed in an attempt to deliver a friendship bracelet at one of her concerts, so Kelce took to social media to invite Swift to a game, and the “Anti-Hero” singer showed up for a September matchup with the Bears.

They continued to see each other throughout the season, whenever Swift was on break from her Eras Tour. The 14-time Grammy winner even made a much-publicized sprint from a stadium show in Japan to Las Vegas in time for the Super Bowl, where she partied with friends such as Blake Lively, enjoyed Post Malone’s performance of “America the Beautiful,” won what appeared to be a beer chugging contest, and then celebrated the Chiefs’ triumph by locking lips with Kelce on the field.

Along the way, Swift became close friends with Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and his wife, Brittany.

During this past offseason, Kelce frequently dropped in on the Eras Tour, even making an on-stage cameo. Swift later said in a social media post she was still “cracking up/swooning over (Kelce’s) Eras Tour debut” before 90,000 screaming fans at Wembley Stadium in London, and that “she was never going to forget these shows.”

Indeed, it has been a busy offseason for both of the superstars.

Swift recently concluded the European leg of the Eras Tour with five consecutive shows at Wembley Stadium, and she is on break until October, when she begins the North American leg with stops across the U.S. and Canada stretching into December.

Kelce and his brother, retired Eagles center Jason Kelce, recently struck a deal reportedly worth nine figures to take their “New Heights” podcast to Amazon’s Wondery. He is due to appear in Ryan Murphy’s murder mystery “Grotesquerie” on FX debuting Sept. 25, and he is hosting “Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity” on Prime Video premiering Oct. 16.

Then there’s the fact that the Chiefs, who have won two straight Super Bowls and three in the past five years, are chasing some history beginning Thursday night. No team has ever won the Lombardi Trophy three consecutive times.

Kelce was asked this week how he juggles everything, and he pointed to the Chiefs practice facility — and Arrowhead Stadium, which sits just up the hill and across the parking lot — as his sanctuary, where he is surrounded by his closest friends.

“I just love football and how it takes me away from life,” he explained, “and it gives me something I can feel genuinely happy about. I enjoy coming into the building, working on my craft, getting to understand a new game plan and perfecting that for the people around me. It gives me a purpose to kind of go about my day and to live my life. I have so much excitement doing it.”

Not everything has been smooth for Swift and Kelce this offseason, though.

Last month, Swift canceled three sold-out shows in Vienna after the CIA discovered intelligence that led to multiple arrests of men linked to the Islamic State group. The agency’s deputy director, David Cohen, said “they were plotting to kill a huge number — tens of thousands of people at this concert, including I am sure many Americans — and were quite advanced in this.”

Then on Thursday, a spokesperson for Kelce denounced a document recently posted online that called into question the authenticity of their romance as “entirely false and fabricated.” The document, carrying the title “Comprehensive Media Plan For Travis Kelce’s Relations Following Breakup with Taylor Swift,” was posted on Reddit but has since been deleted.

It was posted about the same time that Kelce appeared on “The Rich Eisen Show,” where he discussed their relationship.

“She had just been so open to learning the game,” Kelce said. “I think what makes her so good in her profession is that she’s so detailed in every aspect of it, from the words to her music and even the releases and the music videos and everything. She’s just so detailed and a part of it, that I think she was just curious about the profession.”

Kelce even said that Swift had started drawing up some plays for him, though he noted with a smile, “She’s a little biased and just creates plays for me. So we’ll see if they can make coach (Andy) Reid’s office.”

But before his debut with the team Thursday night, football fans will see him fighting for dominance in another (fictional) arena.

Henry, who previously played for the Tennessee Titans, appears in a Gladiator-themed Pepsi commercial slated to run before and during Thursday’s broadcast of the Ravens-Kansas City Chiefs game.

The ad finds him in the Colosseum alongside fellow football stars Travis Kelce, a running back for the Chiefs, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen and Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson as they battle tigers — but not each other — and seek the favor of an empress portrayed by rapper Megan Thee Stallion.

The commercial also stars actors Jake Lacy and Lamorne Morris as bewildered Pepsi drinkers transported to the ring to watch as the action unfolds (“I really gotta stop thinking about the Roman Empire,” Morris quips.)

The Ravens-Chiefs game will air on NBC and WBAL Channel 11 at 7 p.m.

Located on the U.S. Naval Academy Dairy Farm, the Maryland Corn Maze’s farmers reshape the 8-acre cornfield with a different theme each year. The corn is planted in June, and once the plants reach roughly 2 feet in height, the maze design is cut into the field, a practice started in 2006.

This year’s design features various symbols from Swift’s career, including a guitar, the friendship bracelets her fans famously trade at shows, her lucky number 13, and the heart hands that have been her signature since her debut in 2006.

There are games scattered throughout the maze and this year, if visitors get lost, they can use their phone’s GPS to help navigate. In addition to the maze, there is a hayride, petting farm, paintball course, pumpkin patch, zipline course, tire mountain, pony rides, and other attractions.

Kanin Wren’s Taylor Swift Experience, a cover band, will perform Oct. 2 from 5-7 p.m.

Tickets start at $17.95 with discounts for first responders and members of the military. Parking is $5 or free if there are more than three people in the car. Pets are not allowed, except for Bring Your Dog Weekend, which is the first weekend in November and the last weekend before the maze closes for the season.

CBS announced the slate of 18 new “Survivor” cast members on Wednesday in advance of the show’s 47th season, which begins Sept. 18.

Gabe Ortis, a 26-year-old Baltimore radio host and Ravens fan, is the latest castaway to hail from Maryland, which has seen nearly a dozen residents participate in the reality TV series, including Brian Heidik, a Burtonsville native who was the winner of Survivor Thailand Season 5. More recently, last season’s Emily Flippen was a Texas native who lives in Laurel. In season 45, Hannah Rose, a Connecticut native who was a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University, joined the competition.

Watchers of the sometimes cutthroat but always conniving reality TV competition hosted by Jeff Probst, will find that Ortis is ready to play the game.

“I am not here to make friends,” he says in an introductory clip released by CBS, detailing his understanding that sometimes it’s necessary to “lie, cheat and steal” to get ahead in the competition.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Ortis was asked to name three words that describe himself. He said: “opportunistic, resourceful, blunt.” He told EW that he left his job to be on the show, which he called the “best sad decision I ever made.”

He also describes himself as a cat lover — he has two, Chachi and Saba — whose hobbies include live sporting events, poker and snowboarding.

Ortis will be joined on the show by another Marylander: Terran “TK” Foster, a 31-year-old marketing manager who is from Prince George’s County and lives in Upper Marlboro.

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Another cast member who is bound to shake things up is Jon Lovett, a co-host of “Pod Save America” who was once a speechwriter for former President Barack Obama. Other players include a flight attendant, an ER doctor and an AI researcher.

As usual, this season’s competitors will be divided into three tribes as they compete in physical and mental challenges on a beach in the remote islands of the South Pacific. Castaways are voted off the island one by one (most often) with the sole remaining player winning the $1 million prize.

“Survivor” airs at 8 p.m. on CBS and on the subscription streaming service Paramount+.