The funny and sharp fourth novel by acclaimed Bangladesh-born British author Tahmima Anam, The Startup Wife, exposes the folly of looking for leadership in the startup sector, which reveres disruption in all areas except its own.

In this brilliantly incisive social novel, a quasi-faith community springs from a social media platform called WAI, short for “We Are Infinite.” WAI uses an algorithm to design personalized rituals based on three meaningful elements of a person’s life—and then introduces that person to a like-minded community.

It’s easy to see why WAI would be appealing. Its rituals fill the void many modern-day people feel in the absence of organized religion. The platform's essential concept is that if we treat something as sacred, we believe that it is more than entertainment, that it offers moral rewards and is worthy of rigorous contemplation. (Listeners to the "Harry Potter and the Sacred Text" podcast will find this idea familiar.)

But first, the novel begins with a love story: Thirteen years after high school, Asha Ray reunites with her crush, Cyrus Jones, when they attend a memorial for their late English teacher. Asha is four years into her Ph.D. at Harvard, and Cyrus has become a charismatic spiritual polyglot. He’s traveled the world, collecting bits of philosophy and religion from an endless variety of sources, and distilled them into something people can use in their own lives. “I create rituals,” he says.

Cyrus and Asha’s intellectual connection is intense, and soon, so is their physical relationship. The novel focuses on their all-encompassing, interconnected work-life partnership, which also includes, to a lesser extent, their best friend, Jules. When Asha’s artificial intelligence research hits a roadblock, she draws inspiration from Cyrus’ work and decides “to start a platform that [allows] people without religion to practice a form of faith.” Through Asha’s programming wizardry, WAI becomes a life-changing phenomenon. But it quickly becomes clear that the platform, intended to bring people together, is likely to blow the triad apart.

The Startup Wife is framed as a satirical novel about startup culture, but because Americans revere that culture, its foibles and failings are our failures, too. Tech investors subscribe to the “great man” theory of history as much as the rest of America, and this unavoidable fact begins to spoil Asha’s relationships with her two male partners. Investors are more apt to provide valuable exposure and support to a passion project fronted by a brilliant (usually white) man rather than a geeky brown woman. So even though Asha’s research is the source of the platform’s Empathy Module algorithm, handsome Cyrus becomes the figurehead for WAI. Initially resistant to making his spiritual practice into a business, he is easily seduced into playing CEO and messiah.

While The Startup Wife is full of beautifully messy and enviable characters, Asha’s fierce feminism and candor stand out. Of course, she’s far from innocent. She’s a creative genius who wants her due, just as any man would. But it’s a delight to experience Asha’s first-person perspective of the world and her metamorphosis into a powerful, flawed woman.

Because The Startup Wife is sexy and funny and puts relationships at the forefront, it might be easy to overlook its depth and sophistication. But its priorities are right where they should be. When people create a community with their friends and lovers, it is inevitable that boundaries will dissolve and that friendship, love, ego and identity will become intertwined. The Startup Wife’s insights about modern relationships, gender politics, race, technology and culture are as excellent and vital as its storytelling.

As Together We Will Go opens, 29-year-old Mark believes he’s never going to succeed at writing. He’s had suicidal thoughts since high school, he’s had enough of life, and he’s come up with a plan: a final bus trip, one last cross-country party with a group of like-minded souls who can’t carry the weight of life anymore.

J. Michael Straczynski’s novel follows this group of mostly young people intent on ending their lives. As the bus stops in several states to pick up passengers, the story cycles through all 12 characters’ perspectives, but six take center stage: the aforementioned Mark; Karen, a young woman with chronic pain; Tyler, a young man with a worsening hole in his heart; Vaughn, a 66-year-old widower with a painful secret; Lisa, whose bipolar disorder has led her to despair; and Shanelle, a lonely woman who has been bullied for her size. As the bus makes its way west, these characters connect, form alliances and deal with each other’s quirks and bad behavior.

Straczynski, a comic book writer, screenwriter and co-creator of Netflix’s “Sense8,” uses text messages, emails, online journal entries and audio transcripts to reveal the characters’ thoughts and actions, creating a 21st-century epistolary novel. Because of this format, the novel moves along quickly, although the characters’ thoughts occasionally blur together, especially when musing philosophically on the state of the world and their places in it.

But a late plot twist is satisfying, intensifying the characters’ bonds as they decide what to do. While a novel about characters planning to end their lives is not for everyone (as the introduction notes, “discretion is advised”), Together We Will Go is, in the end, about friendship and learning to love.

We are all memory keepers. Recalling and memorializing the past is an essential part of the human experience, whether through photographs, videos or little mementos that line our shelves. Amy Ashton, the 30-something protagonist of Eleanor Ray’s debut novel, The Missing Treasures of Amy Ashton, has perhaps taken this habit a bit too far.

In the London suburbs, Amy’s collection of trinkets has grown out of hand. Once destined to become a painter, Amy now channels her creativity into finding ways to navigate the zigzagging trail through the boxes that fill her home—boxes of broken things, porcelain birds, empty bottles, coffee mugs, cookbooks, newspapers, mirrors, plant pots and vases with long-dead honeysuckles inside.

Her collection can best be described as junk, and cultivating it is Amy’s way of dealing with the shocking tragedy that turned her life upside down over a decade ago. But when a family moves in next door, Amy learns that 8-year-old Charles has developed his own obsessions to handle the quirks of life. Initially annoyed by the neighborly interferences, Amy slowly warms to Charles’ friendship and the help offered by his family.

The Missing Treasures of Amy Ashton is heartwarming and tender as it pokes fun at the absurdities and tragedies of life with quintessential British humor. Supporting characters add to the charm and mystery in Amy’s quest for a better future, one that’s unencumbered by junk.

This is an ideal read for anyone looking for a good-humored and uplifting story, but especially for those who enjoyed Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and Ruth Hogan’s The Keeper of Lost Things.

Following the success of her recent novels The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six, author Taylor Jenkins Reid has amassed a legion of fans that could put those of her titular heroines to shame. Readers have giddily gobbled up Reid’s romps through the glitz and glam of bygone Los Angeles and have been waiting with unbridled excitement for her next novel. In Malibu Rising, Reid capitalizes on her winning formula to create another bona fide hit, this time spinning a decadent family drama that revolves around a single life-changing day in 1983.

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Every year, the four Riva siblings throw an epic end-of-summer bash, notorious for its excess and hedonism and the A-list guests who attend. This year, however, the party will be notable not merely for the debauchery on display (though there will be plenty of that) but also for the family drama, as some of the Rivas’ closely guarded secrets come to light. With the Riva mansion reduced to a smoldering pile of ashes come morning, it’s safe to say that nothing will ever be the same after this blowout.

As Reid ushers readers through this fateful day, we spend time with each of the Riva siblings: Nina, the hyper-responsible eldest sister and famed surf model whose husband left her for another woman; Jay, the superstar surfer who appears to have it all but whose life is secretly falling apart; Hud, a kindhearted and gentle photographer whose new girlfriend is undoubtedly going to make some waves; and Kit, the youngest and perennially overlooked sister who itches for a chance to shine on her own merit.

Reid provides additional depth and nuance by intertwining the siblings’ 1983 narrative with a timeline that traces the tragic relationship of their parents, June and legendary singer Mick Riva. Malibu Rising is packed with plenty of scintillating scandal, but Reid cultivates real empathy for her characters, who form the tender heart that beats at the novel’s core and are its greatest achievement.

Malibu Rising is a juicy, irresistible book that will sweep readers away.

Not every 350-page novel can be torn through in a weekend, but readers may find themselves batting away sleep and setting an alarm for early the next day to continue Jean Hanff Korelitz’s propulsive literary thriller, The Plot. Considering the success of Korelitz’s previous bestseller, You Should Have Known, which became HBO’s “The Undoing” starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant, her skill at ratcheting up the tension should come as no surprise.

The Plot is an ingenious piece of storytelling—a story within a story, two plots for the price of one. Jacob Finch Bonner is a washed-up novelist whose debut book led to a brief dalliance with literary success, but that was years ago, and he has since slipped off the radar. At the novel’s start, Jake is scraping by, teaching at a poorly ranked MFA program. When one of Jake’s students, Evan Parker, reveals the twisty plot behind his yet-to-be-written novel, which Evan is convinced will be a bestseller, Jake begrudgingly concedes that literary fame surely beckons.

A few years pass, and when Jake doesn’t hear anything about the novel or its author, he does some online snooping and is shocked to discover that Evan died a few months after the residency. So Jake writes the novel that never was, titles it Crib and becomes a publishing sensation. But things start to unravel when he begins to receive anonymous threats accusing him of theft.

It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to structure The Plot the way Korelitz has—to claim that Crib will be a surefire bestseller, and then in case we doubt her, to share parts of Crib to reveal just how good it is. But Korelitz is an audacious writer who delivers on her promises. Her next big-screen adaptation surely awaits.

In this disquieting tale by three-time Bram Stoker Award winner Sarah Langan, neighbors have a falling-out amid a natural disaster, unleashing a frenzy of madness, malice and misunderstandings throughout a quiet Long Island community.

Before the drama really begins, something is already amiss on Maple Street. Gertie Wilde realizes that her family is the only one that Rhea Schroeder, the neighborhood queen bee, hasn’t invited to the community’s Fourth of July picnic at nearby Sterling Park. While Gertie and Rhea exchange words, their daughters Julia and Shelly are in the midst of their own feud until a sinkhole opens in the park, sending everyone scurrying.

Sarah Langan takes readers on a descent into depraved suburban drama.

The hole, a microcosm of the larger climate crisis, is cordoned off, and the neighborhood children are warned to stay away. Then a child falls into the hole, which sets off a disturbing chain of events as stories and secrets spread throughout the tightknit community.

Langan weaves interviews and news clips into her tightly written, fast-paced narrative, conveying the infectious spread and mutation of stories goaded by media sensationalism and attention-seeking neighbors. As gossip and rumors swell and proliferate, the stakes grow exponentially as well. The richly complex main characters reveal flawed pasts and duplicitous natures as the story transforms into a witch hunt, trying to discern which of the suspects may be responsible for the child’s erratic behavior before she fell. Horrific claims pit the children against their parents and the adults against one another.

Langan skillfully casts this suburban neighborhood in sinister light, building a sense of discord and apprehension from the first page. Intricate and edgy, Good Neighbors is a descent into depraved suburban drama, perfect for fans of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Stephen King-style thrills.

Set in author Leesa Cross-Smith’s native Kentucky, This Close to Okay is the story of two strangers coming together to sort out their fears and disappointments.

While driving home from work one rainy October evening, Tallie Clark, 40 and divorced, spots a man preparing to jump from a bridge. A therapist by trade, she doesn’t hesitate before rushing out of her car, ignoring the traffic and the rain, to dissuade the man from jumping. Thankfully Tallie’s bravado in approaching the stranger catches him off guard and delays him long enough that he agrees to back off and get a cup of coffee with her. He won’t reveal his name or much else, but that doesn’t stop Tallie from inviting him to her home to spend the night.

The morning comes, and with it a kind of comfort and thankfulness that allows soft-spoken Emmett to reveal to Tallie not only his name but also the pain that brought him to the bridge. Tallie, though she seems perfectly put-together, isn’t any less heartbroken than Emmett. The two start sharing their deepest feelings with each other, making their chance encounter extend into a whole weekend together. Interestingly enough, their revelations don’t include the basic details that Tallie is a therapist or that Emmett has a pretty sketchy public profile. Both are still afraid on some level to completely reveal their identities.

Cross-Smith places mental health at the heart of this story, bringing attention to the importance of asking for help when navigating the complicated twists and turns of life. This Close to Okay is a fast-moving, drama-filled roller coaster that will keep you guessing about how things will turn out for these two lost souls.

In Helen Fisher’s debut novel, Faye, Faraway, Faye mourns her late mother 30 years after her mother’s death, describing grief as a feeling that’s “like a missing tooth: an absence I can feel at all times, but one I can hide as long as I keep my mouth shut.”

Faye has a good life in London, where she’s a mother to two young daughters, Evie and Esther. She’s married to Eddie, an all-around good guy who’s studying for the ministry, though she can’t picture herself as a vicar’s wife. She loves her friends and her career testing product designs for blind people. Still, there’s a hole at the center of her life, left by the death of her mom when Faye was 8 years old.

When Faye finds an old photo in which her 6-year-old self is sitting in an empty toy box, she’s surprised to encounter the same box later in Eddie’s study. Eddie has brought the tattered box down from the attic to fill with textbooks, but Faye returns it to the attic, feeling possessive about the box and aggrieved by the loss of her mother. When she hits her head on a lightbulb and shatters it, she steps into the box to avoid the broken glass. Once in the box, she falls through time to her childhood home in the mid-1970s, where her mother is asleep, as is 6-year-old Faye.

The rest of this gentle time-slip story is composed of Faye’s interactions with her young mother, Jeanie, and her own younger self, and then her return to the present, where she ponders what to do about this new ability. Faye’s voice is charming, funny, sometimes philosophical and occasionally digressive. Her first-person perspective is in direct conversation with the reader, asking us if we’re still with her and assuring us that she understands if we’re not. Faye, Faraway is a welcome escape.

If you’re the type of reader who self-soothes by losing yourself in a book and are in need of a potent comfort read, French author Cathy Bonidan’s English-language debut novel is just what the doctor ordered. Exceedingly charming and guaranteed to bring a smile to your face, The Lost Manuscript is a multilayered testament to the life-changing properties of a single book when it reaches the right reader.

Such is the case when Anne-Lise Briard stumbles upon a forgotten manuscript while on vacation in northwest France. After devouring the story, she is inspired to forward the manuscript to an address scribbled on one of its pages, hoping that she might gain some insight into the provenance of the manuscript. Never in her wildest dreams could she have anticipated that her letter would reach the manuscript’s author himself, who confesses that the last time he saw this manuscript was 30 years ago while on a flight to Montreal and that it had been only half-finished at the time. Intrigued, Anne-Lise doggedly traces the path of the manuscript to uncover its mysterious second author, a pursuit that encourages new relationships (and in some cases, romances) to flourish as she contacts the numerous individuals whose lives have been shaped by the manuscript over the years.

The Lost Manuscript is first and foremost a love letter to literature and readers. Eternally hopeful, this buoyant epistolary novel is refreshingly devoid of cynicism and instead celebrates the ways in which books can enrich our lives and foster connection. Bonidan’s parceling of a genuinely intriguing mystery and gentle romance into bite-size, elegantly written chapters makes for a swift and captivating read that, despite its sweetness and endearing quaintness, is not without substance.

The spiritual successor to the epistolary classic 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff, The Lost Manuscript is a soul-satisfying book that is sure to be loved.

The past has a way of catching up to us, often when we least expect it. In Waiting for the Night Song, the idyllic childhood summer of two girls implodes after a shocking event.

Once close friends, Cadie Kessler and Daniela Garcia went their separate ways after witnessing a deadly argument. Twenty-five years is a long time to live with a burden like theirs, but they’ve tried to move on with their lives. When the secret buried in their childhood woods is exposed, everything they thought they knew about that summer will be questioned.

In her first novel, journalist Julie Carrick Dalton extols the virtues and beauty of the natural world and laments the forces that threaten it, passionately capturing the devastation that a fire can cause and the helplessness people feel in the face of such uncontrollable disaster. Adult Cadie works as an entomologist, trying to protect the New Hampshire woods she loves from an invasive species and the ever-present fear of drought that could lead to devastating fire. Through Cadie’s eyes, we see her beloved forest as living and breathing, worthy of care.

Ever since the fateful day when gunshots echoed across her lake, fear has been Cadie’s constant companion. Dalton slowly teases out this growing sense of dread for Cadie and Daniela—and Daniela’s undocumented family— against the backdrop of impending catastrophe and growing tensions in their small town.

Though her style comes across heavy-handed at times, Dalton writes thoughtfully and poetically about a place clearly close to her own New Hampshire-based heart. Cadie and Daniela’s interrupted friendship forms the core of the novel, and Dalton captures that best-friend bond so intensely forged in youth.

Through vivid and emotional imagery, Waiting for the Night Song speaks to the power that a place and its people can have over your life.

When a person chooses a new home, it’s rarely a decision based on the people who live nearby. The homebuyer’s focus is typically on the property and the neighborhood surrounding it. But once the person moves in, their life will invariably intersect with those of the neighbors.

Roy, Wendy and their daughter, Shy, draw a crowd when they move into Cobble Hill, an upscale neighborhood in Brooklyn. Roy is a bestselling British novelist, but the family is ready for a change. They move across the ocean to Wendy’s native New York City, where Roy’s desire to blend in quickly becomes impossible. He’s struggling with his next book, and though she doesn’t admit it to her husband, Wendy is also having trouble with her new magazine job.

Soon, Roy is pulled into his neighbor Tupper’s marital drama when Tupper asks Roy to catsit. Tupper’s wife, Elizabeth, is an artist who comes and goes on her whims, and Tupper is anxious and eager for her return. Nearby, Stuart and Mandy face challenges of their own. The couple fell in love in high school, and Stuart found fame as a rock star. But those days are over, and now Stuart works a stable but boring job. Mandy is frustrated with her body’s changes as she enters her mid-30s, and she lies about a medical diagnosis to cover her inertia and grab her husband’s attention, which has recently become divided by Peaches, the elementary school nurse, ever since he met her while picking up his sick son, Ted. Meanwhile, Peaches and her husband, Greg, were longtime fans of Stuart’s band, and she indulges her crush. Peaches and Greg’s son, Liam, doesn’t know what to make of the tension between his parents.

In Cobble Hill, the residents’ lives intersect and tangle with one another as school dramas unfold and neighbors host social gatherings. As the couples examine their significant others’ relationships with the neighbors, author Cecily von Ziegesar (creator of Gossip Girl) spins a fast-paced, funny tale of the sometimes confusing but often entertaining ways neighbors relate to one another.

Environmental racism, police and FBI malfeasance, gentrification and other social injustices are front and center in Aya de León’s novel A Spy in the Struggle. Even COVID-19 makes a brief appearance. All of these of-the-moment elements come together to make up a compulsive tale set in Holloway, a poor but proud neighborhood near San Francisco.

The book’s opening tells you almost everything you need to know about its protagonist, Yolanda Vance. An associate in what turns out to be a corrupt law firm, she rats the otherwise prestigious company out because it’s just the right thing to do. For Yolanda, doing the right thing is paramount. It’s almost as important as being the right thing. The daughter of a charismatic but adulterous Southern preacher and a woman who too often let lowdown men lead her astray, Yolanda decides early in her life to let nothing get in the way of her success. That includes men, racism, sexism and any other “ism” out there lying in wait to trip her up. Her focus and determination pay off when the FBI, in what seems like an act of gratitude, hires her and gives her a very special assignment.

Yolanda learns that an eco-activist group called Black, Red and GREEN! is making things difficult for a Microsoft-size government contractor called RandellCorp, which has invaded Holloway without offering residents any but the most low-level jobs. Moreover, the behemoth company is dumping carcinogens in an old railway yard even as they pretend to be greener than Kermit the Frog. Yolanda’s job is to infiltrate Black, Red and GREEN! and report on the comings and goings of its members. But this story isn’t just about a rock-ribbed conservative whose eyes are opened; it soon morphs into something darker and more kinetic.

A Spy in the Struggle is as gripping as it is surprising, dropping readers into the thick of things before they even know it.