A historical fantasy set in medieval Russia about a young girl who perceives and interacts with household spirits and older folk-magic as organized Christianity gains influence and seeks to suppress those practices.

A first-person narrator recalls growing up at an elite boarding school in an alternate late-20th-century England and the friendships and loyalties formed there while an institutional ethical situation quietly shapes their lives.

A first-person account by an English butler who undertakes a road trip and uses the journey to recall years of service at a great house. The narrator reconstructs past events and relationships while confronting what his lifelong commitment to duty has cost him.

A careful-minded man becomes entangled when a neighbor's emergency draws him into a clandestine act; the novel sets a moral and intellectual test between loyalty and law.

Set primarily inside an Oregon psychiatric hospital, the narrative is told through the vantage of a patient who presents as deaf and mute. The plot focuses on tensions between the ward’s controlling staff and a charismatic newcomer whose actions unsettle the ward’s fragile order.

A contemporary romance centered on a married couple whose relationship is strained by loss and psychological pressure. The story follows their attempts to navigate grief, miscommunication, and the decision points that will determine whether the marriage endures or falls apart.

A first-person memoir in which the author confronts his upbringing, family relationships, and struggles with body weight and compulsive behaviors while placing those personal troubles against broader questions of race, responsibility, and belonging.

Set in the near future, the novel traces efforts around an institutional body created under international agreements whose mandate is to secure the rights of future generations.

Lily Greene is a shy, bookish assistant who wants to edit children’s books.

Billy Pilgrim, an American who served in World War II, experiences a fractured relationship with time after the war. The novel follows episodes of his life — including his capture and survival of the Allied firebombing of Dresden — presented out of chronological order.

A middle-aged man discovers a diary that takes him back to his thirteenth year at the turn of the twentieth century; through that recovered record he reconstructs a formative episode in which a naïve boy becomes entangled in adult secrets and social expectations.

A fictional first-person memoir presenting the life and travels of Estebanico (Mustafa ibn Muhammad ibn Abdussalam al-Zamori), a Moroccan enslaved man who survives the Narváez expedition and recounts his experience in the New World.

A newly placed woman at a secluded country house confronts eerie, inexplicable phenomena tied to the home’s past while she navigates grief, social scrutiny, and household secrets. The book sets up a slow-building collision between domestic routine and uncanny intrusions that heighten psychological strain.

After a devastating nuclear war, American society has turned against modern science; rebuilding cities and technological expertise is banned and religious groups that opposed technology before the war now shape public life.

A mid-20th-century espionage thriller centered on an intelligence investigator drawn into a baffling missing-persons and brainwashing case. The plot pressure comes from unraveling institutional secrecy and technical clues inside an atmosphere of Cold War suspicion.

A first-person memoir tracing the author's journey from an abusive childhood through competitive swimming, substance use, and sexual exploration toward eventual stability in adult life.

A coded plea from deep inside frozen Russia summons a linguistically gifted outsider to infiltrate a secret research installation.

A Philadelphia patrol officer working in a struggling neighborhood pursues a string of murders while also searching for her own missing sister.

Lucy Grealy recounts her life before and after a childhood diagnosis of Ewing's sarcoma, describing the medical treatments that altered her face and the social and emotional consequences that followed.

Set in an early 20th-century Ontario village, the novel follows a woman constrained by family and social expectation who faces a decision point that lets her imagine a different life.

Lulu Miller interweaves a personal memoir about grief and depression with the life and work of 19th-century fish taxonomist David Starr Jordan to probe how humans try to impose order on a chaotic world.

Light stages several linked strands: high-tech spacefaring and scientific work, characters wrestling with gender and identity, and a persistent thread involving serial violence. The novel frames these pressures against questions about consciousness, causality, and human meaning across near-future and cosmic contexts.

Set in the same universe as an earlier work by the author, this novel follows encounters with a mysterious, hazardous site called Nova Swing and the people drawn to it.

Set around wartime conflict in Ethiopia, the book follows characters caught up in the pressures of invasion and resistance. Its central orientation is toward people’s inner responses to violence and the ways ordinary lives and loyalties are tested by war.

A retelling of Greek myth that reimagines the life of the witch Circe from her own point of view. The narrative follows her development from an outsider of the immortal world into a solitary figure who practices magic, encounters famous mythic figures, and negotiates relationships with gods and mortals.

A retelling of the Trojan War era centered on the relationship between a famed Greek warrior and the person who witnesses and loves him. The account compresses mythic events into a personal, emotionally charged narrative that follows their bond through training, war, and the pressures of fame and fate.

A first-person, essayistic account that traces an author's experiences around pregnancy, partnership, and family while weaving in philosophical and theoretical reflections. The work observes intimate domestic moments alongside questions about gender, identity, and what it means to make a family in contemporary life.

Set around a near-future global election system in which small, competitive micro-democracies (centers of political power) and powerful information platforms shape outcomes, the book follows intersecting characters whose loyalties, jobs, and survival link to campaigns, corporate interests, and the flow of data.

Set in a near-future theocratic state, the narrative follows a woman assigned to a mandated reproductive role within tightly policed households.

Penelope tells her side of the Odyssey: a conversational, retrospective account that revisits her marriage, life after Odysseus’s departure, and the aftermath of his return, while a Greek chorus of her twelve maids interrupts with short, varied genres to offer alternate viewpoints and collective voice.

An elderly Congregational minister composes an extended letter to his young son late in life, recounting his own family history, the tensions between pacifism and militant abolitionism in his forebears, and the spiritual convictions that shape his sense of duty and affection.

A journalist-investigator pursues the murky death and legacy of a notorious film director whose work inspired a devoted, secretive subculture.

A 15-year-old math-minded narrator who describes his world through exact observations decides to investigate the mystery of a neighbor's dead dog. The investigatory quest exposes family tensions and forces the narrator to navigate social rules and sources of fear while trying to hold to his own systems of logic.

A nested, epistolary metafiction: an editor-like narrator assembles and annotates a manuscript about a documentary called The Navidson Record, which recounts a family's discovery that their house contains impossible interior spaces.

Set in Nazi-era Germany, the novel follows a young girl who acquires books and navigates life in an adoptive household while war encroaches on daily routines. The narration comes from Death, offering an outside, occasionally amused perspective on civilians, loss, and the act of reading.

Set across decades around an attempted assassination of a major reggae figure, the novel tracks how that act ripples through Kingston and New York over years of changing politics, gangs, and drug economies.

Set on an 18th-century Jamaican sugar plantation, the novel follows Lilith, a young woman born into slavery, as she navigates the violent limits imposed on her body and choices.

Set in a Regency-era social world, the novel follows an adult romantic pairing over a pivotal summer that tests affection, propriety, and personal change.

A Jesuit-led mission makes contact with an alien civilization and returns with consequences that force survivors to reckon with faith, morality, and trauma. The novel frames its central pressure around human responses—religious, ethical, and personal—to an otherworldly meeting and the costs that follow.

Mary Karr recounts her 1960s childhood in a small industrial town in Southeast Texas, centered on a troubled family life and the group of men her father called the Liars' Club.

Set during World War II in England, the novel follows a wounded young soldier convalescing at a military hospital who confronts feelings for men with very different positions and temperaments.

A historical retelling of the early life of Theseus that frames mythic episodes as the development of a young man into political and social adulthood. The narrative traces his movement across Greek communities and into Crete, depicting ritual contests, sea travel, and clashes between differing social systems.

Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist, pursues an unconventional experiment that produces a sapient being assembled from disparate parts. The setup places questions of responsibility, suffering, and consequence at the center: the creator must confront what his act of making another life unleashes on both parties.

A retelling of the early life of Merlin that frames his psychic visions and uncertain parentage within the fractured, post-Roman kingdoms of Britain.

A first-person account of growing up between Chinese folktales and American life, where family history and mythic stories intertwine with recollections of childhood.

A first-volume autobiographical account of Maya Angelou’s early life, following her from early childhood in Stamps, Arkansas, through adolescence and into young motherhood. The narrative traces how encounters with racism, personal trauma, and steady literary influences shape her sense of self and dignity.

Lakewood focuses on a near-future or altered-present community shaped by medical research and its social consequences. The plot pressure arises from ethically fraught experiments and their effects on Black women and community trust.

In a near-future United States where virtual reality and neural implants shape online life, former underground hacker India Carless (Trouble) reunites with her ex-lover to confront someone impersonating her identity in cyberspace.

An exploration of fungi and their roles across ecosystems and human life, surveying fungal biology, ecological relationships, and practical implications.