After falling asleep one evening, Korean American James Mun is seemingly transported to a surreal world. But this isn’t a dream; it’s “the Flowering,” a dimension some people access via sleep. After meeting Bloom, a giant, lovable blue wolf who instantly takes to him, James joins Bloom’s Crew Blue, consisting of E (the leader), Honey, and Lux. (While they’re all humans who visit the Flowering each night, Bloom is a native citizen.) The crew, armed with weapons the members can materialize (with certain limitations), helps to free “marked citizens” who must move on to other dimensions. Those marked who don’t leave become crazed “moulded” citizens, which the crew vows to take out. When things start to happen that even E, Honey, and Lux can’t explain, Crew Blue seeks a Shaman in the unpredictable City. Kim’s delightfully intricate, dreamlike world comes with copious rules; the most crucial one involves monitoring sleep-time with a tattoolike “watch” on the back of a hand. (The humans will die if they don’t get 56 hours in a given week, and if their mandatory quota of eight hours a night falls short, they must quickly make it up.) With the exception of the instantly irresistible Bloom, warming up to these characters takes time—James makes constant mistakes, Lux neglects to relay pertinent information, and E and Honey habitually glare and growl at “newborn” James and call him “moron” or “idiot.” The cast, however, ultimately forms a strong bond as they engage in exhilarating battles (“Massive coils of hard, segmented flesh followed, dropping like bags of sand and slithering aside”). Individual backstories further complicate both the plot and characters, and the sublime final act will leave readers itching for the sequel.

The year is 4050, and there is a serial killer on the loose. The Family Guy—so called because he murders entire families—is such an elusive and dangerous criminal that the authorities decide the only way to capture him is to build a real-life synthetic investigator designed with the mind and memories of fictional Scotland Yard super-sleuth Miranda “Serial Killer” Miller. “I was a work of fiction, an alloy of various detective tropes,” the synthetic Miller quips about her early 21st-century namesake. “Or a shameless rip-off, depending on who you listened to.” Miranda is dispatched to Las Vegas, England (a facsimile of the American original that now serves as Europe’s party capital) to investigate the latest crime scene. To fit in better with the locals, she has been programed to speak exclusively in IngoLingo, a Clockwork Orange-like “gobspew street-English, spawned by the fads and whims of smin knowed as the Vox Popeye.” In Las Vegas, she teams up with Bogart Wham, the “Numero Uno Celeb Influsser in PopRep” (that’s the Popular Republic, the populist-capitalist federation that now occupies Europe and North America). Together, they will prove whether a detective assembled from middling novels can catch a very real serial killer. According to Chadwick’s inventive lore, Earth was plunged into a 1500-year Dark Age in the middle of the 21st century, and the newly revived civilization of 4050 therefore reveres American culture—and Donald Trump in particular—in the way that Renaissance thinkers revered the Romans; this is the reason “freddykrueger” and Family Guy remain coherent references. (Some still manage to feel dated, however: Common profanities include “zuck”—for Mark Zuckerberg—and “Trump in Stormy!”) Numerous Trump jokes aside—two countries in 4050 are modeled on his teachings, including one called Trumpia—the novel’s premise and its execution are quite brilliant. Readers will end the book hoping more Serial Killer Miller cases are in the works.

Harrold is a former butler to King Charles III and the United Kingdom’s “leading expert on etiquette,” according to the jacket description, but he makes a good impression and does well without a ghostwriter. The Crown plays a modest role in the lives of most Britons, but Harrold’s parents were genuine enthusiasts who enjoyed visiting country houses or attending ceremonies where anyone connected to the royal family appeared. Catching the bug, he shared their fascination. As a child, he sent chatty letters to the queen, and by adolescence discovered that butlers made a career of assisting royalty and vowed to join them. He loved his first experience, a two-week stint cleaning a country house for the shooting season, after which the owners offered him a job. Trainee butlers spend their time scrubbing, vacuuming, and making beds, but he also attended a college course on serving at table. After some years in a run-of-the-mill manor, he was interviewed repeatedly before joining the household of Charles, Prince of Wales and later king. As he rose to the top of his profession, he seems to have enjoyed every minute of it. There is less drama than readers familiar with Upstairs, Downstairs or Downton Abbey might expect, and history buffs will note the absence of obnoxious royalty. He has little but praise for the aristocracy who seem to treat their staff well and even (in the younger generation) familiarly. Service in a noble household demands as much drudgery as skill, but he remains star-struck to the end as he recounts the camaraderie, friendship, and occasional horseplay of fellow workers, along with the perks—good food, celebrities, world leaders close-up, and first-class travel.

One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.

Dayna Lev is sitting in her car, stuck in LA traffic behind a moving truck containing all her possessions, when a friend sends her a link to a Reddit post clearly written by her boyfriend—and that’s how she discovers that he doesn’t really want her to move in. Oh, and she’s currently unemployed. She calls Craig Deckler, a former mentor, who offers her a job at his crumbling family home in the Loz Feliz hills. Dayna gives Craig’s address to the moving van and commits herself to overseeing social media content created by the young adults in what is now a hype house. Olivia Dahl from North Dakota, a newly orphaned 19-year-old, applies for a position at the house, and shows up with her bags and a crushing desire to find out what happened to a former resident—Becca Chambers, a tarot card reader—who mysteriously disappeared months earlier. The other residents include Morgan Bokelberg, makeup aficionado and stylist; Piper Bliss, who was kicked out of her first hype house, and her boyfriend, Sean Knight, who together focus on creating nonspeaking, dance-related couples content; and Jake Cho, who focuses on content designed to make middle-aged women feel cozy and loved. At the pinnacle of the house is Craig, whose family has owned the famous Deckler House for a century. His goal is to raise enough money to renovate the house so it can stay in the family. Author Stein adeptly captures the messiness and contradictions of being human and creating content, portraying the blurred lines between reality and online personas and the unhinged emotional toil that creating such content can take.