As Diana Abu-Jaber’s novel Fencing With the King opens, it’s late 1995 and Amani Hamdan is adrift. At 31, she’s separated from her husband and drinking too much, her poetry and teaching careers on pause. She’s moved back in with her parents, Gabe and Francesca, in Syracuse, New York. Then her Uncle Hafez (Gabe’s brother and an adviser to the king of Jordan) calls from Amman with a surprising invitation: The king wants Gabe to partake in his 60th birthday celebrations, specifically a fencing exhibit. As teenagers in Jordan, Gabe and the king fenced together. In the interim years, Gabe immigrated to the U.S., married Francesca and raised Amani, their American daughter.

While considering this invitation, Gabe pulls out a family heirloom, an ancient knife known as Il Saif, passed to him by his dying father. Amani returns the knife to its satchel, where she finds a note written by her grandmother Natalia, a sad fragment that speaks of loss, perhaps that of a child. Amani, wondering about this grandmother she never knew, persuades Gabe to accept the king’s invitation, and soon father and daughter are in Jordan, greeting extended family and attending the first of the king’s celebrations.

This is only the beginning of a story that focuses on multiple searches. Although the novel belongs to Amani, it includes the perspectives of her uncle and father, Hafez and Gabe, who are brothers but opposites. Hafez is a self-centered mover and shaker in modernizing but autocratic Jordan, and Gabe is a quiet contractor living a suburban American life. Amani is seeking clarity about herself and her failed marriage, but she also wants to understand her family’s past, in particular the sadness of grandmother Natalia, who was forced to flee her village in Nazareth as a child in 1918 and resettle as a Palestinian refugee in Jordan. With the help of her 19-year-old cousin Omar, Amani begins to decode the mystery embedded in her grandmother’s note, a possible secret at the heart of her family history.

Abu-Jaber, whose family’s story is reflected here, writes with a poet’s attention to language, and the novel beautifully evokes Jordan, from its modern cities and society parties to its ancient desert sites and Bedouin goatherds, all existing together under the whims of an autocratic kingdom and at a time (the mid-1990s) when peace in the Middle East seemed almost within reach. Fencing With the King is a complicated, character-driven and slow-burning mystery with a satisfying yet open-ended finale.

When one looks back upon a life, one remembers it as a series of noncontiguous fragments, with each discrete moment forming a picture of a person. Italian writer Sandro Veronesi knows this instinctively. In The Hummingbird, he presents just such a puzzle to create a unique portrait of an enigma of a man.

In a narrative that moves through seven decades, from 1959 to 2030, Veronesi chronicles the life of Marco Carrera, an ophthalmologist in the Italian village of Bolgheri. His mother nicknamed him “the hummingbird” because, until age 14, he was worryingly shorter than his peers. But Marco resembles a hummingbird not just in his childhood stature but also, as one character puts it, “because all [his] energy is spent keeping still.”

Nevertheless, much happens to this supposedly fixed entity. The book starts in 1999, when a therapist who has been treating Marco’s wife, Marina, risks his career to tell Marco, “I have reason to believe you may be in grave danger.”

In chapters that incorporate text messages, emails, phone conversations, love letters and even poetry, Veronesi describes the events that shape Marco’s life, including his and his wife’s infidelities; his five-decade correspondence with a woman he loved since he was 20; the death of Marco’s sister and his estrangement from his brother; the difficulties facing his daughter, Adele, who met with a child psychologist when she was little because she felt she had a restrictive thread attached to her back; and Marco’s later guardianship of Adele’s daughter, Miraijin.

The Hummingbird is a moving, black-humored work about family and the tragedies born of time and poor decisions. Veronesi has created complicated characters that don’t always behave nobly, are products of their time and are, from a literary standpoint, the richer for it. As the omniscient narrator observes, “There are those who—not moving at all—still manage to cover great distances.” That’s the message of this wise book: A hummingbird may seem stationary, but in its way, it can cover a lot of ground.

Transformation is the hallmark of any well-drawn character, but in her heart-rending first novel, Shadows of Pecan Hollow, author Caroline Frost asks whether real transformation is attainable for everyone. Can a very bad man ever be redeemed? Can a lost girl find herself when she’s grown? Can people who are ridiculed or ignored by society learn to believe in their worth without relying on validation from others?

At 13, Kit has no reason to trust adults. She’s been shuffled around among a number of foster families, starved and even beaten. When an older man named Manny shows Kit simple yet unfamiliar kindness, she becomes his loyal companion. Though he gains her trust, he’s a con artist and a thief, and he’s only able to care for Kit through his ill-gotten gains.

Manny recruits Kit for small thefts and then gun-toting robberies, and over time they become notorious partners in crime, wanted by the police. Their life is not just itinerant but also dangerous, and when Kit becomes pregnant with their child, a shift in her perspective allows her to look at Manny and their violent delights with fresh eyes. Yet years later, when Manny is released from prison and comes for their daughter, Kit learns that the hard life isn’t so easy to leave behind.

Frost puts her background as a marriage and family therapist to good use in crafting Kit. Less perceptive writers may have written Kit as a cliché, but Frost guides the reader to understand Kit’s story and the reasons behind her susceptibility to a charismatic egotist. Shadows of Pecan Hollow will be heartbreaking for readers wiser and more experienced than young Kit, as they’ll be able to see Manny’s manipulation and violence for what it really is: abuse. Frost’s relationship expertise also shines in crafting the dynamic between adult Kit and her untameable daughter, Charlie.

At over 400 pages, Shadows of Pecan Hollow takes readers on a long journey—not unlike Kit’s journey to find a home. It will especially resonate with readers who have their own hard-won stories of survival.

Poet Destiny O. Birdsong’s (Negotiations) debut novel is as much about what isn’t said—what can’t be said—as it is about what’s actually on the page. Nobody’s Magic is a masterfully crafted and sometimes painfully honest story told in triptych, centering on three Black women with albinism living in Shreveport, Louisiana.

This unusual novel is built on spaciousness and silence, with each section reading almost like a novella. Suzette lives with her wealthy parents, who shower her with gifts while keeping her sheltered from the world. After falling for a tenderhearted mechanic who works at her father’s shop, she begins to express her own desires for the first time. Maple is grieving the sudden death of her mother, a straight-talking, fun-loving and beloved sex worker. And Agnes has spent most of her adult life trying to set herself apart from her sister. When she meets a man while on a temporary job in Utah, a string of impulsive choices leads her to a confrontation with her family.

These are dynamic characters, each with her own distinct narrative voice and particular way of looking at the world. Suzette’s first-person narration is informal, conversational and intimate. Maple’s section is raw with grief. Agnes’ story, told in the third person, is slightly distant, as if she can’t quite bear to face herself. But each woman experiences a major shift: Suzette makes a momentous decision, Maple experiences a catastrophic loss, and Agnes faces her conflicted relationships with her mother and sister.

Each section is bound to the others through themes of Black womanhood, familial expectations, grief and the power of self-determination, but instead of drawing straightforward conclusions about these connections, Birdsong leaves the reader to meditate on the questions and ideas she raises. What do these very different experiences of Black womanhood have to say about one another? How does Suzette’s story inform our understanding of Maple’s? How does Maple’s relationship with her mother influence how we read Agnes’ section? Buried in these pages are infinite conversations—about what it means to be labeled “other,” to be a part of a community, to choose something for yourself.

Nobody’s Magic is worth reading simply to spend time with these women, but the thoughtful and unexpected way that Birdsong combines their three unique stories into one is what makes the book unforgettable.

From the first paragraphs of Vladimir, it’s clear we’re plunging into a campus novel with some darkness to it but also some comedy. At 58, the unnamed narrator is a long-tenured English professor at a small upstate New York college. She should be writing another novel and coasting to retirement. Instead, her husband, John, also an English professor and chair of their department, is being investigated for his past affairs with students, and he’s on leave while he awaits the outcome.

John’s affairs are no secret; long ago, he and the narrator agreed on an open marriage of sorts. Still, she’s angry—at John and pretty much everyone else. “Lightning bolts of anger shot from my vagina to my extremities,” she says, explaining why she’s been avoiding faculty events.

At this moment in the narrator’s life, a new colleague appears: Vladimir Vladinksi, a younger writer with a well-regarded first novel and abs to die for. The narrator is suddenly and completely obsessed, and she concocts a plan to charm and seduce Vlad. Complicating this setup is the narrator’s grown daughter, Sidney, who returns home after a fight with her longtime girlfriend.

Vladimir sweeps us along on a sometimes claustrophobic ride, as the narrator muses on departmental politics, campus “cancel culture” and her uncomfortable perch as a feminist who’s somehow landed on the wrong side of the #MeToo movement. She’s funny, biting and given to bouts of narcissism and self-loathing. As she single-mindedly pursues Vlad, she slowly reveals past and present bad decisions, leading to a shocking climactic scene.

Part dark comedy and part satire, with a dash of the gothic and plenty of literary allusions, Vladimir is a little hard to pin down. But if you imagine the Netflix comedy “The Chair,” whose faculty characters are almost done in by contemporary campus politics, crossed with the acidic love-hate relationship at the heart of Tom Stoppard’s 1962 play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, you wouldn’t be too far off.

Vladimir is Julia May Jonas’ first novel, but she’s also a playwright who teaches at Skidmore College in Saratoga, New York. With her background as a dramatist, she brings notable verve and drama to this sharp campus novel.

Elegant, melancholic and emotional, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells is lyrical from start to finish. The second novel from Hannah Lillith Assadi, a 2018 National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree, draws its narrative style from the realms of poetry, making for an atypical and dazzling reading experience.

Part of the book’s uniqueness lies in its subject: Elle Ranier, an elderly woman with dementia. At the beginning of World War II, Elle and her husband, Simon, left New York City to move to Lyra, a small island off the coast of Georgia, where blue stones are rumored to lurk beneath the ocean. In the novel’s present, set in 1997, Elle reminisces about her younger years and grapples with the secrets and betrayals of a life lived and nearly forgotten.

Elle’s tenuous consciousness leads to a blurring of the lines between the current narrative and her flashbacks and dreams, and Assadi follows this lead by emphasizing Elle’s hallucinations and memories. Underneath Elle’s imaginative thoughts, however, lie clues to the novel’s plot, ingeniously scattered so that the book feels like a mystery, the reader’s mission being to take Elle’s ramblings and form them into a cohesive, linear storyline. Assadi’s willingness to trust her reader is evident, and the book consequently becomes more immersive and self-reflective.

Assadi takes great care in crafting each sentence, incorporating poignant and thoughtful language into the heart of the story. This focus allows Assadi’s themes to shine, taking readers along on a journey into what it means to remember and forget, to be young and old, to be satisfied and to long for something or someone. It’s rare for a novelist to so seamlessly bring their themes into the spotlight without relying primarily on narrative events, but Assadi is willing and able to take the risk. As a result, her themes are even more relatable and decipherable, and impart longer-lasting messages.

Eerie and spellbinding, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells is not for everyone; its plot is incredibly subtle, leading to some moments of confusion, and readers must be willing to work through these moments of doubt and be flexible as they continue. But for the right reader, Assadi’s work is the epitome of ingenuity. She has mastered the art of entering a character’s mind and bringing it to life.

With admirable narrative range (and a lavish helping of the epistolary), Hanya Yanagihara returns the concept of the United States to the drawing board. Clocking in at over 700 pages, To Paradise is Yanagihara’s first novel since the runaway bestseller A Little Life (2015), and it’s both a dystopian departure from and an extension of her previous themes. The heavily scaffolded narrative is told in three sections, spanning 1893 to 2093, and it’s set in historically reimagined New York City and Hawaii—both places the author has called home.

To Paradise begins in Washington Square in an alternate 1893, in which New York is part of the Free States, separate from the rest of the U.S. Here sits the ancestral home of David Bingham, favored grandson of a banking magnate. David is suffocated by the pressures of his station, and also by his desire for the protection that his station affords.

Flash forward 100 years, and disenfranchised Hawaiian prince Kawika is living in this same house with his much older boyfriend during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Jump ahead another century to 2093, and pandemic survivor Charlie lives in the house, which is now government co-opted, with her husband by arranged marriage.

Time and again, Yanagihara’s characters must decide whether it is preferable to buy into someone else’s way of thinking—whether it be a friend’s, a lover’s or a government’s—or face their own reality. The threshold for self-debasement and humiliation is high here, and it is on this subject that Yanagihara writes most compellingly (albeit disturbingly). Her characters engage with battles for civil rights, grapple with disabilities, confront the social freedoms and limitations surrounding homosexuality across centuries, and live on a rapidly warming planet under a totalitarian regime. Topically this is a lot to juggle, and nuance is a casualty of scope in this novel.

Yanagihara’s imagined American reality prods readers to consider the one we find ourselves stuck with now. To Paradise feasts grimly on the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is not an anomaly, Yanagihara reminds us, but a blip in an increasingly illness-ridden world. If we redrew borders and rewrote laws, the novel asks—if intentions were mostly good—would the U.S. be any better off now?

In his experimentally structured debut novel, Velorio, Xavier Navarro Aquino makes important points about Puerto Rico, its history as a commonwealth of the United States and the catastrophic aftereffects of Hurricane Maria, which decimated the island in September 2017.

The Spanish word velorio signifies a wake or funeral, a moment of mourning but also recognition of what has been lost. There’s a pun in this translation to English, with wake also meaning the aftermath of a storm, or the turbulent waters behind a fast-moving ship. The wake of Hurricane Maria—a storm so powerful and its effects so catastrophic that Maria has been retired from the circulation of names used by the National Weather Service—provides the energy for this remarkable, mythic novel, populated by a memorable cast.

Maria was one of the most intense storms ever recorded on American territory and the deadliest since 1998. In some areas, floodwaters rose up to 6 feet in 30 minutes, eventually exceeding 15 feet in total, destroying 80% of the crops on the island and an estimated 18 million coffee trees. Months later, half of the population still did not have electricity or potable water. Billions of dollars in aid remained undistributed off-island. In this traumatic aftermath, the Puerto Rican people were rendered largely immobile.

Velorio is far from immobile, taking readers on a painful journey across the devastated island. Aquino addresses the situation using a wide range of voices and narrative styles. Drama is high as survivors fight to rebuild what they can salvage from the fury of nature and the incompetence of the powers that be.

The novel, dedicated to “the thousands lost and the unaccounted,” introduces the survivors individually, including Camila, who digs her sister Marisol’s drowned body out from the mud and clings to it as it decays, a symbol for the island itself. Carrying Marisol’s body, Camila gravitates toward a haven called Memoria, where gangs of young people are trying to reconstitute a society based on authoritarian symbols and gestures. Their leader, Urayoan, dresses homeless boys in red castoffs pulled from the dead, builds a hellish tower to concentrate his power and oversees the looting of what little is left.

Animals are skinned and butchered, all manner of outrages are performed, and “ghosts of people, ghosts of men, ghosts of women” are everywhere. The foundations of Memoria inevitably collapse like a fever dream, set afire by those who desperately escape it. Maria, “the monstrua,” has gutted the island, and demagogue Urayoan’s dream of a new Utopia will be shaken in turn.

Amid scenes of carnage and dialogue that incorporates Spanish idioms and Puerto Rican slang, the novel includes large swaths of poetry written by a visionary secondary character named Cheo. Some of the poems are only drafts, unfinished and abandoned. “It’s my poetry and that’s what keeps us alive,” he tells the younger gang members. In this way, Velorio pays homage to Nobel Prize-winning Caribbean author Derek Walcott, whose Homeric epic, Omeros, brought recognition to poets of the region. Extensive passages of Cheo’s work give the sense of a life raft bobbing along, battered by the monstrous storm: “Are we culprits to our fate / And live by our names? / And that is empire. / And that is violence.”

At age 14, Smita Agarwal and her family were forced to leave Mumbai after a horrifying incident of religious persecution. They immigrated to Ohio, and now, 20 years later, Smita has grown up to become a world-traveling journalist who writes about gender issues. As Thrity Umrigar’s Honor opens, Smita is asked to cover an assignment in Mumbai—“the one place she had spent her entire adult life avoiding.” Readers will find themselves completely immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of India, a place that Smita acknowledges can be “cosmopolitan, sophisticated, but also resolutely out of step with the world.”

Similar to her central character, bestselling author Umrigar grew up in Bombay (now Mumbai) and immigrated to the United States at age 21. Ever since, she’s been writing “to make sense of the world and to make sense of my own, often contradictory emotions and feelings.” In this spirit, Honor is a multifaceted examination of Smita’s love-hate relationship with her native country, a place that fills her heart yet is besieged with assaults on women. As one character comments, “We Indians are in the Dark Ages when it comes to the treatment of women.”

That issue is thoroughly explored through the lens of Smita’s assignment: the case of Meena, a Hindu woman suing her brothers after they killed her Muslim husband and then burned and disfigured her. Smita travels to Meena’s remote village and befriends the impoverished woman and her toddler daughter. She interviews the brothers, the police and the village chief, who emboldened Meena’s brothers to commit their atrocities. While Meena and Smita live in completely different worlds, Smita increasingly realizes the parallels in their lives and in the ways they have been treated as Indian women.

Throughout the novel, Smita is escorted by a wealthy single man named Mohan, who adores his country and is eager to reintroduce its glories to his charge. She is resistant, however, and their constant tug-of-war about India’s pros and cons results in a well-rounded portrait of a complicated country.

Suspense deepens as Smita and Meena await the court verdict, and there’s a horrifying aftermath that seems largely avoidable. Not surprisingly, romance develops between Smita and Mohan, and the blend of passion alongside brutality sometimes makes for an uneasy mix. Nonetheless, readers are likely to remain engaged with the story and its well-drawn characters.

Whether she’s writing about the bright lights of Mumbai or the poverty of village life, Umrigar excels at creating engaging situations and scenes. Readers will appreciate this novel’s deep understanding of the many complexities of Indian society.

Rachel Kapelke-Dale tackles everything from abortion to sexual abuse in The Ballerinas, an unflinching, unapologetically feminist glimpse into the world of professional ballet.

The daughter of a famous ballerina, Delphine studied ballet intensively for most of her life at the famous Paris Opera Ballet. Along with her friends Lindsay and Margaux, she was poised to become a star—until she suddenly left France for Russia and gave up performing in favor of choreography. 

Now Delphine is 36 and has returned to Paris to stage a ballet of her own creation with Lindsay as its star. Delphine feels she and Margaux wronged Lindsay somehow, and flashbacks to their teenage years reveal how these three young women were stretched to the breaking point by a demand for perfection from their teachers, peers and, in Delphine’s case, her mother.

Kapelke-Dale, who studied ballet herself, grants readers rare insight into a grueling world that, despite being largely female, is still dominated by men. Male teachers, choreographers and dancers hold power over their female counterparts, and gendered violence is embedded in the culture. Ballet is portrayed as an institution that fails the women it supposedly celebrates. For example, Delphine is betrayed at one point by a fellow dancer in a particularly horrific way, and he is immediately protected by the institution. 

The patriarchal structure of ballet prizes youth and beauty, which affects Delphine, Lindsay and Margaux in new ways in their mid-30s. Lindsay is nearing an age at which she will have to retire from performing to make way for the teenagers coming onto the scene. Kapelke-Dale shows how these women’s bodies are breaking down due to years of demanding dance training, making the pressure to appear thin, glowing and youthful feel even more cruelly ironic.

Despite all of this, The Ballerinas is not a bleak novel. Delphine, Lindsay and Margaux begin to push back against the system that has oppressed them, coming to terms with their past and moving forward into a world in which they have agency over their bodies and careers. It is to Kapelke-Dale’s credit that this empowering ending feels earned, rather than naively optimistic.