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June works in the kitchen of the local elementary school, and exciting things don’t happen to her very often. That’s why the news that Ralphie Pruett’s father had been arrested for killing Cindy Hanks’ mother is so electrifying. Because just before the time of the murder, Mr. Pruett had stopped at June’s broken-down car and offered her a ride. She can’t avoid the thought that what happened to Vernay could have happened to her instead.

Most women might get over this with a shrug, but June has an inner life like Grand Central Station something is always happening in her head. Bill, her fond and handsome husband, wants her to forget about it, to Go have some fun. Instead, out of the goodness of her heart (if there is a darker reason she prefers not to think about it), she makes a sympathy call on the grieving family, pretending to be a close friend of the murdered woman. Her growing relationship with the victim’s child and brother uncovers certain facts that will change her life forever.

Twenty Questions is touching, funny and deeper than it seems to be. June’s flow of consciousness never stops, and encompasses everything, ranging from the resolve of killers ( how much effort do they put into it? . . . Do they keep at it, or after a while, do they get hungry and go home for dinner instead? Maybe they think, well there’s that TV show on, and I hate to miss it. ) to thoughts on looking into the murdered mother’s closetful of clothing ( It didn’t seem right that someone’s accessories should last longer than their body. ) Some fears, though, are left to be plumbed after the story is finished. Alison Clement’s first novel, Pretty Is as Pretty Does, gleaned enough praise from reviewers that she might have reason to worry about the proverbial curse of the second novel. No need. Twenty Questions passes the test with an A. Maude McDaniel is a writer in Cumberland, Maryland.

David Mitchell’s third novel, Cloud Atlas, is such an astounding feat that it’s tempting to think there must be several David Mitchells, each of whom wrote one part of the book. A tour de force by the acclaimed British author (Ghostwritten, Number9Dream), the novel crosses continents and decades with six completely distinct but equally entrancing narrative voices.

It begins with the tale of Adam Ewing, an American notary traveling aboard a shipping vessel through the Chatham Islands in the 1850s. The meek explorer, convinced he’s living with a deadly brain parasite, submits to a doctor friend’s dubious ministrations and, meanwhile, finds himself the unwitting champion of a stowaway. Just as the thread of his story pulls tightest, the journal ends—mid-sentence, mid-word in fact—and suddenly we’re reading about the spirited Robert Frobisher, a disinherited British aristocrat in 1930s Belgium with a genius for seduction and musical composition. His narrative, like Ewing’s, is instantly absorbing, and just as abruptly truncated. Now we’re in a corporate-crime novel set in 1970s California, where a troubled young fluff reporter—Luisa Rey, daughter of a famous muckraking journalist—stumbles across evidence of an impending nuclear disaster and massive cover-up. Another cliff-hanging ending, and we cut to present-day London and the snarky musings of vanity-press publisher Timothy Cavendish, who pulls one over on the author of a best-selling prison novel only to find himself bizarrely imprisoned. Zap, and we’re in Korea, in a future full of "replicant" slaves, digitized souls and government by "corpocracy." Then, sci-fi switches to Mad Max for the central part of the book, a far-future Hawaii after the fall of civilization, narrated in dialect by a teenage goatherd.

Like a Chinese box, or some complex literary origami, the novel unfolds even as it’s folding back in upon itself. Each protagonist might be a reincarnation of the one before, a fact that’s hinted at by a recurring comet-shaped birthmark. The longer you read, the more perfectly the pieces fit into a whole; the further you’re drawn into the novel, the more removed your perspective becomes. The reaction this creates is a unique one: large-scale understanding that holds within it the small-scale but vital dramas of the human heart. It sounds incredible, and it is.

Becky Ohlsen writes from Portland, Oregon.

Second-generation Chinese-American Carnegie Wong just can’t catch a break. His manipulative mother criticizes every aspect of his life, including Janie, the voluptuous, flaxen-haired WASP he married (mean-spirited Mama Wong dubs her Blondie ). Following her death after a prolonged bout with Alzheimer’s during which time she remained lucid enough to spew daily doses of venom Mama Wong continues to run her son’s life, stipulating in her will that a cousin be brought over from mainland China to properly care for the Wong’s two adopted Asian daughters, Wendy and Lizzy, and Bailey, their biological son. Soon after the shy, mysterious nanny Lan arrives, Carnegie suspects that his devious mother had more than the well-being of her grandchildren on her mind.

A critically acclaimed novelist and short story writer whose works include Typical American and Mona in the Promised Land, Chinese-American Gish Jen is known for quirky characters and candid commentary on cultural assimilation. In this latest offering, Jen’s use of shifting first-person narrative threatens to overshadow her wry, seamless prose. Readers must divide their attention between the story (which itself moves between past and present) and the ever-changing perspectives from which it is being told. As the novel progresses, Lan becomes ever more attached both to Carnegie and his impressionable teenaged girls, much to the chagrin of Carnegie’s levelheaded wife. The Love Wife’sclever plot maintains momentum until the end, when the long-awaited truth about Lan’s identity is revealed. The novel’s disjointed narrative structure won’t dampen the enthusiasm of Gish Jen’s fans, who will embrace her mordant musings on destiny, ethnicity and the richly textured fabric of the modern American family.