In A BOOK OF AMERICAN MARTYRS, Joyce Carol Oates tells the story of two very different and yet intimately linked American families. Luther Dunphy is an ardent Evangelical who envisions himself as acting out God’s will when he assassinates an abortion provider in his small Ohio town. Augustus Voorhees, the idealistic doctor who is killed, leaves behind a wife and children scarred and embittered by grief.

There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities. HOMESICK FOR ANOTHER WORLD is a master class in the varieties of self-deception across the gamut of individuals representing the human condition. But part of the unique quality of Moshfegh’s voice is the way the grotesque and the outrageous are infused with tenderness and compassion.

ALWAYS HAPPY HOUR weaves tales of young women --- deeply flawed and intensely real --- who struggle to get out of their own way. They love to drink and have sex; they make bad decisions with men who either love them too much or too little; and they haunt a Southern terrain of gas stations, public pools and dive bars. Though each character shoulders the weight of her own baggage --- whether it’s a string of horrible exes, a boyfriend with an annoying child, or an inability to be genuinely happy for a best friend --- they are united in their unrelenting suspicion that they deserve better.

Isolated at home and an outlander at school, 14-year-old Linda is drawn to the enigmatic, attractive Lily and new history teacher Mr. Grierson. When Mr. Grierson is charged with possessing child pornography, the implications of his arrest deeply affect Linda as she wrestles with her own fledgling desires and craving to belong. And then the young Gardner family moves in across the lake, and Linda finds herself welcomed into their home as a babysitter for their little boy, Paul. It seems that her life finally has purpose, but with this new sense of belonging she is also drawn into secrets she doesn’t understand. Over the course of a few days, Linda makes a set of choices that reverberate throughout her life.

On a cold winter’s day, a pre-school teacher is shot to death in front of parents and children at the Jewish Congregation in Stockholm. Just a few hours later, two Jewish boys go missing on their way to tennis practice, and an unexpected blizzard destroys any trace of the perpetrator. As investigative analyst Fredrika Bergman and police superintendent Alex Recht struggle to pin down a lead, someone or something called the Paper Boy --- a mysterious old Israeli legend of a nighttime killer --- keeps popping up in the police investigation. But who was the Paper Boy really? And how could he have resurfaced in Stockholm?

Siri Hustvedt has always been fascinated by biology and how human perception works. She is a lover of art, the humanities and the sciences. She is a novelist and a feminist. Her lively, lucid essays in A WOMAN LOOKING AT MEN LOOKING AT WOMEN begin to make some sense of those plural perspectives. There has been much talk about building a beautiful bridge across the chasm that separates the sciences and the humanities. At the moment, we have only a wobbly walkway, but Hustvedt is encouraged by the travelers making their way across it in both directions.

It has been 20 years since the god-like Augurs were overthrown and killed. Now, those who once served them --- the Gifted --- are spared only because they have accepted the rebellion's Four Tenets, vastly limiting their powers. As a Gifted, Davian suffers the consequences of a war lost before he was even born. He and others like him are despised. But when Davian discovers he wields the forbidden power of the Augurs, he sets into motion a chain of events that will change everything. To the west, a young man whose fate is intertwined with Davian's wakes up in the forest, covered in blood and with no memory of who he is. And in the far north, an ancient enemy long thought defeated begins to stir.

Alexander Bruno travels the world winning large sums of money from amateur “whales” who think they can challenge his peerless acumen at backgammon. But after a troubling run of bad luck in Singapore and Berlin --- perhaps brought on by his chance encounter with childhood acquaintance Keith Stolarsky and his girlfriend Tira Harpaz, or perhaps the emergence of a blot that distorts his vision --- Bruno passes out and is brought to the hospital. There, he’s given a depressing diagnosis and his only hope is to return to Berkeley, where he discovered his psychic abilities, and undergo experimental surgery paid for by the scheming Stolarsky.

The five centuries between the end of Roman Britain and the death of Alfred the Great have left few voices save a handful of chroniclers, but Britain's "Dark Ages" can still be explored through their material remnants: architecture, books, metalwork and, above all, landscapes. Max Adams explores Britain's lost early medieval past by walking its paths and exploring its lasting imprint on valley, hill and field. Each of his 10 walking narratives form free-standing chapters as well as parts of a wider portrait of a Britain of fort and fyrd, crypt and crannog, church and causeway, holy well and memorial stone.

It is 1870, and Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an elderly widower who travels through northern Texas giving live readings to audiences hungry for news of the world, is offered money to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Johanna, raised by a band of Kiowa raiders who killed her parents and sister, has forgotten the English language and refuses to act “civilized.” But on their 400-mile journey, Captain Kidd and Johanna forge a deep bond, making it difficult for Kidd to give her up to her reluctant aunt and uncle when it’s time. But can he risk becoming --- in the eyes of the law --- a kidnapper himself?