British humor is so darn good at bringing to light the absurdities of everyday life without being oppressive or depressing. Annie Lyons’ new novel, The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett, is no exception.

In southeast London, 85-year-old Eudora Honeysett has quite literally had enough of life. Living alone in the same house where she grew up, Eudora is increasingly baffled and annoyed by how the world around her has become louder and lazier. Though her brain is sharp, her body is a daily reminder of what’s to come: an undignified death surrounded by strangers. Without any friends or family to account for, Eudora signs up with a Swiss clinic to end her life on her own terms. She is completely ecstatic at the thought of being gone before Christmas.

Just when things are looking up, so to speak, a new family moves in next door, including Rose Trewidney, a sweet and hyper 10-year-old girl who is instantly intrigued by the grumpy old woman. Eudora finds Rose’s curiosity extremely nosy and obnoxious, but trying to resist Rose is even harder than summoning death.

Intertwined with these events are Eudora’s memories of her childhood, including heartbreaks, wartime survival and missed opportunities. These flashbacks give the reader something deeper to mull over concerning their own wins and losses, and how our perceptions change during different stages of life.

Even with death and loneliness at its core, The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett is filled with personable characters, witty dialogue and relatable moments. It’s a vibrant and humorous celebration of being alive and learning to say goodbye. 

Fredrik Backman’s gift for portraying the nuances of humanity is well known to his many loyal fans. With Anxious People, Backman once again captures readers’ hearts and imaginations.

An armed, masked robber attempts to hold up a bank in a Swedish city. But as the thief approaches, the apathetic young teller is unmoved. It’s a cashless bank, the teller says. Doesn’t the would-be robber know that? Well, no. The robber doesn’t. As police arrive, the robber rushes into the street, through the nearest open door, up a set of stairs and into an apartment’s open house. When the potential buyers and real estate agent see the thief, they assume they’re being held hostage.

Backman describes these events with a light touch, making clear early on that, though there’s a crime at the heart of this story, his novel is much more than this series of events. Father and son police officers Jim and Jack try to understand how a bank robber slipped, unnoticed, from an apartment full of people. As the officers interrogate the witnesses, Backman reveals glimpses of each character’s past.

Anxious People could reasonably be called a mystery, but it’s also a deeply funny and warm examination of how individual experiences can bring a random group of people together. Backman reveals each character’s many imperfections with tremendous empathy, reminding us that people are always more than the sum of their flaws.

Reading Amy Poeppel’s Musical Chairs is as fun as watching a Marx Brothers comedy, especially that scene in A Night at the Opera when everyone is squashed into the stateroom.

Warmhearted, maternal, beautiful and rich, Bridget Stratton has long been the cellist in the Forsyth Trio. The problem is that they’re actually a duo, as she and the pianist, her platonic pal Will, have no luck in keeping a violinist. The most recent was Gavin, whom both Will and Bridget sort of disliked. (He was brilliant and never let them forget it.) When the novel opens, Bridget has come to Connecticut to spend the summer in her ramshackle old country house down the road from her famous dad’s sprawling estate, and she is getting a little desperate for a fiddler.

Then Bridget’s hypochondriac daughter, Isabelle, decides to spend the summer in her mother’s guesthouse. Isabelle’s lovelorn twin, Oscar, arrives soon after. Will pops in and falls in love with the sexy local florist. Everyone manages to bring their cats and dogs, including a bear-size Newfoundland named Bear. Even Will’s inamorata has a menacing parrot. These folks can’t seem to function without their familiars.

Meanwhile, Bridget’s dad, composer Edward Stratton, is getting married. This charming and crotchety gentleman is pushing 90, and so is his fiancée. Should Will and Bridget surprise them by playing one of Edward’s compositions at the wedding? Reenter Gavin, demonic toddler and persnickety wife in tow. At least they don’t have a dog.

Among many other characters are Jackie, Edward’s young assistant, who’s both hapless and efficient; Edward’s housekeeper, Marge, a mashup of Hazel and Alice from “The Brady Bunch”; and Bridget’s sister, Gwen, dropper of famous names.

Poeppel’s people are a mess, but her writing is crisp and breezy. Where does everyone end up when the music stops? Read and find out.

The title of bestselling author Kevin Kwan’s blazingly fun new novel is a bit of a misnomer: There’s very little sex. But that’s not what we go to the author of Crazy Rich Asians for, is it? What Kwan consistently delivers—and does so again in Sex and Vanity—are fantastic tales of the over-the-top wealthy, written with just enough empathy to make us care about young, beautiful trust-fund billionaires.

Meet Lucie Tang Churchill. She’s the beautiful daughter of a Mayflower descendant and a Chinese American from Seattle. On her lily-white paternal side, Lucie has always been the outcast. Although she’s a born-and-bred New Yorker, her patrician grandmother still calls her an offensive slang term for a subservient Chinese woman.

When Lucie travels to Italy for the extravagant wedding of a childhood friend, she meets George Zao, a handsome surfer from Hong Kong. Lucie and George get caught in a compromising position at the wedding, and they sheepishly go their separate ways.

Fast-forward five years, and Lucie is a successful art consultant engaged to Cecil Pike, a Texas oil heir and a “GQ-handsome bon vivant.” But Lucie’s family looks down their noses at Cecil’s new money, and Cecil’s family looks right back at Lucie the same way. It’s clear Lucie and Cecil are an odd match—to everyone except Lucie and Cecil. And when George reemerges, Lucie begins to question everything she thought she wanted.

Sex and Vanity is a deliciously fun romp from Capri to Manhattan and East Hampton. Kwan is in fine form, gleefully name-dropping luxury brands and socialites as he spins a heartfelt, satirical tale that observes the price of fame, fortune and following your heart.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that mothers will meddle in their daughters’ love lives. For Andrea Tang, a successful 33-year-old lawyer in Singapore, that truism extends to her aunties, cousins and anyone else who can claim relation to her. She may have graduated first in her class in law school and now owns her condo despite the sky-high housing prices, but what everyone wants to know is, when will she get married?

After ending a long-term relationship, Andrea feels the pressure to find The One while also putting in as many billable hours as possible to secure a partnership in her prestigious law firm. Her friends offer her their support, from signing her up for Tinder to inviting her to a rich people’s version of book club (i.e., no discernible conversation about the assigned book, lots of champagne and sashimi). At the book club, Andrea meets Eric, an Indonesian hotelier. He’s older, wealthy and quickly makes his move.

But Andrea can’t stop thinking about Suresh, her officemate and competition for law firm partner. He’s annoying, engaged to a beautiful but domineering Londoner and not at all Andrea’s type. Except that he’s exactly her type. When Eric wants to take their relationship to the next level, Andrea has to decide whether a future of wealth and comfort wins over listening to her heart.

Author Lauren Ho is a former legal adviser, and her debut novel is a blast. Andrea is a relatable, laugh-out-loud protagonist, a high achiever who also gives in to her weaker instincts on occasion. Last Tang Standing is a near-perfect blend of Crazy Rich Asians and Bridget Jones’s Diary, yet it still feels wholly original.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this review incorrectly stated that Lauren Ho is a former attorney.

Judy Vogel is caught in a downward spiral. She is mourning both the recent loss of her parents and the anticipated loss of her best friend, who is dying of cancer. Judy’s promising career as a children’s author has stalled, and she now supports her family by writing for a wellness website. She has also lost all sense of connection with her husband, a pothead who suffers from severe anxiety and works as a “snackologist,” but they cannot afford to divorce. They are separated but live together in the same house and pretend everything is normal for their teenage son, Teddy. 

But what Judy grieves the most is the increasing loss of closeness to her only child as he grows into a young man. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Judy discovers a strange coping mechanism when she begins to carry their sheltie, Charlotte, everywhere in an old baby sling, to almost everyone’s dismay. 

In this intriguing novel, Laura Zigman doesn’t sugarcoat but instead lays bare Judy’s feelings with heartbreaking honesty. Every middle-aged woman who has ever felt invisible, lost or depressed will connect with some aspect of Judy’s life. Indeed, Zigman labels her work “semi-autobiographical fiction,” which may explain its devastating authenticity. At the same time, Zigman cleverly wraps her story in genuine hilarity. Judy’s continuous, cynical commentary is priceless, especially when discussing Teddy’s Montessori school. 

What at first might seem like a depressing premise is in fact both refreshingly truthful and highly entertaining. As a result of this unique mix, this novel is both unpredictable and delightfully original. For those seeking a good laugh and a good cry, look no further than Separation Anxiety.

The effervescent debut novel by tech writer Kevin Nguyen tackles a wide variety of contemporary issues, running the gamut from the havoc wreaked by unregulated technology to the ethics of music piracy, from the permanence of digital communication to the inherent racism found on dating sites. 

Nguyen adroitly dissects these provocative topics through the stories of two New York City-based millennials who work at Nimbus, a tech startup, in 2009. Margo is black, a brilliant engineer perched at the top of Nimbus’ pay scale. Lucas is Asian American and a low-paid customer service rep. Initially they bond because of a shared interest in obscure music CDs from the 1970s and ’80s, which they illegally upload to an online community “dedicated to the distribution of pirated materials.” At Nimbus, they bond further over the racist corporate culture, felt especially by Margo. Eventually she quits and convinces Lucas to follow her, promising him that she can find them new jobs at another startup called Phantom, a digital messaging site in which all messages are deleted after they’ve been read. But Margo also comes up with a plan to spite Nimbus: On their way out the door, they will steal Nimbus’ email list. Only the next day do they realize they’ve mistakenly stolen the whole user database—names, profile photos and millions of passwords. It’s a mistake that reverberates throughout the rest of the novel.

As the plot evolves, Nguyen continues to inject the storyline with new twists: Margo’s accidental death that Lucas suspects may not have been an accident; his discovery of online messages between Margo and a budding sci-fi author whom he meets and briefly dates; and his efforts to keep his job at Phantom as the company struggles with privacy and censorship issues.

Readers seeking a more linear plot may feel unstable as New Waves bounces between these many storylines, but readers deeply immersed in our increasingly tech-savvy environment will delight in Nguyen’s piercing take on race and gender issues in the workplace, and the ethical debates swirling around social media sites. It’s all delivered with Nguyen’s personal brand of penetrating, acerbic humor.

Even if they don’t live in a nursing home, the fate of most people past age 90 is to become nearly invisible. That’s what makes Man Booker Prize-winner Howard Jacobson’s decision to cast two Londoners in their 10th decades as the principal characters in his sly new novel, Live a Little, such a bold one.

As she approaches her 100th birthday, Beryl Dusinbery (nicknamed “Princess”) must confront the frustration of living with memories that often resemble a piece of Swiss cheese. When she’s not stitching morbidly humorous needlepoint “death samplers,” she’s doing her best to gather fragments of her colorful, romantic past in a biting journal d’amour.

Shimi Carmelli, former owner of a shop that sold phrenology busts, at times wishes he suffered from Beryl’s frequent memory lapses. Instead, he’s afflicted with perfect recall, and much of what he remembers about his distant childhood, including the brother from whom he’s been estranged for decades, is a source of deep pain. Residing in a flat above the Fing Ho Chinese Banquet Restaurant, where he appears periodically to engage in the practice of cartomancy (fortunetelling with ordinary playing cards), he’s considered the “last of the eligible bachelors,” at least among the elderly widows of North London.

It isn’t until roughly the novel’s midpoint that Beryl and Shimi meet and Jacobson’s talents as an astute student of human nature and his mastery of witty, acid-dipped dialogue shine brightest. Through an almost continuous conversation that begins in a cemetery and proceeds in a Regent’s Park cafe and elsewhere, the secrets concealed by these strikingly different characters gradually see daylight. 

“We meet to touch nerves,” Beryl tells Shimi, who believes they’ve come together at “the perfect age to enjoy a verbal friendship.” And though Beryl believes they’re “both stuck with the parts we learnt to play a long time ago,” the subtle changes we witness in these characters belie that rueful assertion. 

Live a Little’s message—that life isn’t truly over until it ends—is a refreshingly optimistic one for readers of any age.

The invitation seems a bit silly to Abigail Sorenson: attend an all-expenses-paid retreat on an island off the coast of Tasmania to learn about a self-help book. But it’s an opportunity she can’t refuse, even if she does expect a catch in the form of a sales pitch.

This retreat isn’t about any old self-help book. The invitation promises to reveal the mystery behind The Guidebook, a tome Abi has received by mail, one chapter at a time, for 20 years. The first chapter arrived when Abi was 15, just before her slightly younger brother, Robert, also 15, disappeared. Although the events didn’t seem to be connected, they’re inextricably bound in Abi’s mind. So what’s the worst that could happen? The retreat might be a sales pitch scam, or it could solve the mysteries that have defined Abi’s life.

Abi couldn’t have predicted the retreat’s reveal, and the experience stays with her as she returns to life in Sydney. Abi begins to reflect on her life, the end of her marriage, the fact that she runs what she’s dubbed a happiness café. Has her light attitude toward life been an effort to turn from the gravity of her experiences? The Guidebook examined another meaning of the word: “Of course, gravity is not a thing. It’s just a way of describing the fact that things fall.” Perhaps Abi has been resisting that fall for decades.

Bestselling young adult novelist Jaclyn Moriarty brings her unfettered imagination and buoyant sense of humor to Gravity Is the Thing. She explores difficult subjects, such as the loss of a sibling, with a light touch. As Abi accepts an invitation to re-examine her life, readers may laugh, cry and even reflect on their own paths of discovery.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Behind the Book feature from Jaclyn Moriarty.

NPR pop culture correspondent Linda Holmes is an unabashed lover and ardent defender of the romantic comedy, so it’s unsurprising that her debut novel is exactly that. Evvie Drake Starts Over is a heartwarming rom-com about loss, grief and second chances.

Ever since her husband—a successful surgeon and her hometown’s golden boy—died in a car crash, Evvie Drake has been in the worst kind of rut. Everyone in her small Maine town chalks up her funk to grief, but as far as Evvie is concerned, the truth is far worse. So much worse, in fact, that Evvie can’t even bear to share it with her best friend, Andy, and has instead resigned herself to a life spent as a young widow, rattling around a house that is now far too big for her, content to lose herself in big books and watch life slowly pass her by.

Everything changes, however, when Andy suggests that Evvie rent out her home’s attached apartment to a friend who also has more than a passing familiarity with life not turning out according to plan. Dean Tenney, once one of baseball’s hottest players, is now infamous for his case of “the yips,” a baffling development that forced him into early retirement after he inexplicably lost his ability to pitch, seemingly overnight. After Dean moves in, a tentative friendship forms between the two that ultimately transitions into something more. Together, Dean and Evvie encourage one another to face their pasts and their present truths, all while discovering that even when life throws you a curveball, it’s never too late to find your happily ever after.

Despite the kernel of sadness rooted at the novel’s core, Evvie Drake Starts Over is a feel-good read that radiates warmth. Holmes nails the balance between romance and humor, with Evvie and Dean’s effortless and truly funny dialogue being a particular strength. In addition to developing their convincing relationship, Holmes spends ample time fleshing out her leads so they feel like real people with legitimate issues.

Uplifting and life-affirming, Evvie Drake Starts Over is a perfect choice for fans of Rainbow Rowell and Marian Keyes.

Read a Q&A with Linda Holmes for ‘Evvie Drake Starts Over.’

Caitlin Moran has a gift—in both short- and long-form writing, in both fiction and nonfiction—that hits like magic when it lands in the lap of the right reader. It’s a rare, mesmerizing talent to simultaneously move a reader and make them laugh so hard they risk falling out of their chair. In How to Be Famous, Moran’s follow-up to How to Build a Girl, she works that magic again.

Moran reunites readers with Johanna Morrigan, a teenager from the Midlands of England who moves to London to further her music journalism career as Dolly Wilde. Once there, she is swept up in a world of rock stars, comedians, parties and in particular John Kite, a newly famous musician with whom she is madly in love. Though they’re close, her love is not returned at first, and through a series of adventures Dolly becomes convinced that the way to draw John closer to her is to write her own way to stardom and seduce him with the power of her prose. Once she’s resigned to do this, things start to happen quickly for Dolly, and she must learn to deal with fame and infamy while also reaching out for the only person she’s really trying to touch.

How to Be Famous lives or dies based on Moran’s ability to render Dolly as an enchanting, vulnerable and hilarious guide through the mid-1990s London music scene, and Dolly’s charm immediately jumps off the page. Dolly is at once bitingly witty and achingly open, not just to the reader but also to the world she’s trying to find her place in, and it sets a tone that makes you both root for her and anticipate her next misadventure.

That might be enough to carry the novel on its own, but Moran doesn’t stop there. Her ambition, like Dolly’s, is to weave into this tale a kind of feminist manifesto that tackles love and sex, as well as the fine line between girlhood and womanhood. She succeeds throughout but keeps you waiting for the final, unforgettable exclamation point at the book’s hysterical climax.

This article was originally published in the August 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.