Set on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s, the novel follows Bigger Thomas, a young Black man shaped by crushing poverty and social isolation.

Set in a future US where women's civil rights have been revoked, a group of female linguists—trained as interstellar translators—create a new language for women as a deliberate form of resistance.

Set in a near-future urban milieu, the story follows a drug-damaged computer hacker recruited by a team — including a battle-hardened ex-soldier and a powerful artificial intelligence — to pull off a high-stakes digital heist.

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

A young woman on a tight budget takes a cheap apartment and soon experiences strange, threatening phenomena that suggest the place itself — and those connected to it — endanger her.

Two young people from different social backgrounds form a fraught, recurring relationship from secondary school into university.

A multi-century, character-focused account of a single house in New England and the people who inhabit, alter, and imagine it over time. The book traces lives and local change through episodes anchored to the house, using domestic objects and family relationships to show historical shifts and personal consequences.

A determined investigator reopens a dangerous case tied to recent political violence and personal loss, tracing clues that connect domestic life to wider conflict. The book follows her efforts to untangle family grief and a history of unrest while someone with violent intent may still be at large.

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 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 multi-generational saga centered on a single family and the town they founded, tracking births, deaths, loves, and obsessions across decades.

A twenty-something New Yorker notices an arresting woman on the subway who turns out to be mysteriously stuck out of her original era.

An investigation into nonhuman minds using cephalopods—especially octopuses—as a case study.

A lone, recovering writer in a modern city discovers evidence of an occult pattern—drawn from a found journal and strange urban phenomena—that suggests unseen entities connected to the city's emotional life.

A married lesbian couple becomes emotionally distant after one partner returns from a disastrous deep-sea dive. The novel tracks the aftermath: attempts at reconnection, the survivor’s altered presence, and the slow accumulation of dread tied to the sea and loss.

Across the 20th century, a Korean family lives and works in Japan, confronting social exclusion, economic precarity, and the burdens of cultural displacement.

Set in a near-future America broken by economic collapse, climate effects, and violence, the novel follows Lauren Olamina, a young woman who records her experiences and develops a practical belief system called Earthseed.

Two adults who already have a shared history confront a choice about whether to become a committed couple while juggling careers and family expectations.

Set in 1920s Harlem, the novel follows two childhood friends whose reunion stirs fascination, rivalry, and moral danger when one woman passes as white. The central pressure comes from competing desires for safety, social standing, and intimacy within racially fraught social circles.

Anne Elliot, a woman in her late twenties, confronts the social consequences of having broken an earlier engagement after others persuaded her to do so.

A book-length series of linked essays that record extended, close observations of the natural world around a creek and turn those observations into philosophical and lyrical reflections on life, perception, and the human place in nature.

A first-person journal from a man who calls himself Piranesi records life inside an apparently infinite House of halls, tides, statues, and changing seas.

Set in early 19th-century England, the novel follows a family with five daughters confronting the social and financial pressures of marriage, inheritance rules, and social standing.