The collection opens with “And Her Name Was Ralph,” a story about a person whose name and life subvert gender roles: By the age of 10, the titular protagonist is helping her farming family by operating plows and harvest machines. At 18, she meets a city boy named Alford—known as Six—and during their first conversation over a motorcycle, she decides she will marry him. At 20, during World War I, she feels rage at a recruitment sign that reads, “BE A MAN AND DO IT. UNITED STATES NAVY RECRUITING STATION.” She wants to enlist and becomes a worker at a munitions factory. Soon after Ralph and Six return home from their wartime activities, they wed. The one thing she can’t seem to subvert is her inability to conceive. One day, to Six’s shock, she comes home with a baby from the Salvation Army’s home for unwed mothers, bringing the child, Faye, into their lives without discussion. Years later, during World War II, Six prepares to enlist, with Ralph’s support, only to discover a painful sore beneath his tongue. He has cancer; three months later, he’s dead. The story continues to explore Ralph’s life beyond grief, but rather than leading to a sharp twist or discovery, the work chronicles Ralph’s acceptance of a life well lived. Eventually, she lies down, “satisfied with her thoughts,” and passes away in her sleep. That same straightforward clarity shapes the collection’s darker looks at humanity. “The Hero” opens with the line, “I killed someone then lied about it to everyone.” The unnamed narrator, an investigator, hunts a 19-year-old criminal, Darrell “Skatch” Mangrum, who’s participated in a wave of robberies of Virginia tourist shops. After a confrontation, the narrator mistakes a hairbrush for a gun and shoots Darrell. The guilt costs him his career—he drinks himself out of a job—and his marriage. He attempts to take his life after his ex-wife calls to say she’s getting remarried, and he survives a hospital stay. A later twist reframes the killing within larger events, and while the story nods toward redemption and acceptance at the end, the narrator pays a karmic cost.

In other stories, a divorced father reconnects with a woman from his study abroad years in Italy, and a workaholic doctor is consumed by a mysterious, years-long chemistry project hidden in his basement lab. The subjects have no connection aside from the universal truth that the characters are all bound by life itself. This universality creates depth, but it’s the crunchy prose that creates the satisfying tension (“I prefer the company of dogs over humans. I’m not saying dogs are perfect, but let’s face it, we humans have a long way to go”). The various narrators throughout the collection personalize each story with varieties of dry wittiness: “She reasoned her version of the truth was like taffy—it could be stretched and pulled in either direction, but it was still taffy in the end.” That logic characterizes the collection as a whole; it’s elastic, engaging, and honestly reckons with humanity’s flaws, distortions, and charm.

After five happy years of marriage, Eliza Talbot suddenly becomes a widow in her 30s. She’s coerced into therapy by Virginia, her annoyingly impeccable mother-in-law. Eliza becomes increasingly vexed by Virginia’s meddlesome antics, which include uninvited appearances at the cottage that Eliza shared with her deceased husband, Joseph, in the village of Dunsbury, England. She’s also irritated by Virginia’s self-appointed role as makeover coordinator for Joseph’s rose garden. The unsavory contributions of the Casserole Brigade, headed by nosy neighbor Mrs. Clark, intensify Eliza’s frustration—and complicate her digestion. Her therapist, Dr. Joyce, seems just as unhelpful when she advises her to write letters addressed to Joseph. But soon, Eliza writes: “Since you died, I have become a collector of platitudes.” She manages her animosity toward everyone in her life through an imagined connection with Hilda, a spider, and her actual friendship with Eleanor, a fellow support-group dropout. As Eliza’s “Dear Dead Husband” letters accumulate, she moves toward reconciliation with her high school best friend Caz and a possible romance with Eleanor’s adult son, David. Although the cause of Eliza’s sudden character growth toward the end of Young’s novel remains ambiguous, her achievement of emotional equilibrium is effectively foreshadowed in her letters’ evolving language: “No one wants witnesses when they’re gathering the sad, pathetic remains of their life off a heap on the floor. That is private.” Eliza’s pursuit of self-reliance as she struggles to evade Virginia and the Casserole Brigade makes for a rapid page-turner. While a few awkwardly coined polysyllabic words (platitudiest, fakeiarrhea, Halloweenafication) slacken the pace, the upbeat, humorous tone promises a satisfying conclusion.

In Yangon, Myanmar, a country ripped apart by a coup, 12-year-old Vika is arrested alongside his father for the crime of sharing poetry. News of Vika’s arrest reaches Kae Zhang, the fearless founder of the Geneva-based human rights organization Article 5. Kae and her diverse team of driven workers, each with personal experience of global displacement and discrimination, set to work on the tricky logistics of getting Kae into Myanmar to negotiate Vika’s release. With the help of her mentor, the crusty and brazen Reinhardt Allen, Kae and her number two, Anan, set off for Thailand, where they begin a dangerous journey across the border into Myanmar. Reinhardt engages a trusted guide named Champo and secures a meeting with a colonel who may be willing to negotiate—but only on his terms. As Kae moves through a shifting landscape of dangerous jungles, decimated villages, and unjust courts, Vika’s freedom seems to move ever further out of reach. Enemies soon appear on all sides—even back in Geneva, where the rest of the Article 5 team members start to feel the reverberations of their dangerous fight for the young boy’s life. Lovett and Schultz map familiar espionage tropes onto well-rendered real-world struggles; realistic fights for dignity and justice drive the action. The authors’ depictions of Myanmar—and of the terror imposed by its military rulers—feel both chilling and authentic, beginning with the assault on Vika’s shop, where “terror lingered in the air, an acrid burning smell.” Kae is an admirable hero with a compelling balance of impressive credentials and relatable insecurity. (She displays plenty of wit, as well: “I just channel my inner Sisyphus,” she says to explain her perseverance.) The cast of secondary characters at Article 5 is equally engaging; the team members are distinguished by vivid personalities and layered backstories. The shared histories and subtle shorthand between them hint at a whole world of fascinating previous adventures and ones to come as the series progresses.

Reporters are always on the hunt for a good story, even while on vacation. Dallas TV journalist Vicky Robeson is ostensibly on a two-week break in California, but thoughts of work are never far behind. Recently promoted to news director, she’s waiting to hear from the higher-ups about her proposed budget, which is coming in the face of network cuts. When she visits Bakersfield, her ulterior motive for her holiday is to find out if her sister is still alive. They were separated during a California wildfire when they were very young, and their parents perished—Vicky never knew if her sibling survived. (“She’d never found anyone who knew any details about her parents. Or her younger sister. But she’d kept looking, kept following up on leads however unlikely they might be.”) Working with Susan Winslow, who singlehandedly runs a newspaper in the town of Isabella, and her teenage niece Chrissy, Vicky finds her search complicated by a reunion with Pete Harris, her former flame. This would be a lot for anyone to take on, but Vicky remains determined and focused, even as she navigates the complex emotional terrain of dealing with her ex-boyfriend and the possibility of reuniting with the sister she hasn’t seen in decades. When the trail leads to the gates of The Colony, an insular, fundamentalist compound located in the middle of a national forest and presided over by the ruthless and violent Richard Hart, Vicky’s investigation takes a dangerous turn. The novel lays out its twisty plot cleanly and efficiently, though the revelations are somewhat muted. Moving along at an engaging clip, the narrative tends to favor plot over characterization. Readers may feel like the complexities and complications of family, work, religion, and relationships are waiting to be explored more deeply.

When she was growing up, writes Machado, Venezuela regularly held elections with peaceful transfers of power and enjoyed a degree of prosperity greater than many of its Latin American neighbors, thanks to abundant oil. That changed when Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999. He “began by focusing on controlling the judicial system,” replacing longtime jurists with his lackeys, and enriched himself while immiserating his people. The universities were islands of resistance, she writes, but now “even private universities…have been compromised by the regime.” Despite winning election to Parliament, she had to fight to take her place there, and, when she ran for president, she was cheated out of victory by Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro. She also won the Nobel Peace Prize (which she later gifted to President Trump, who is not mentioned in the book). Machado’s “manifesto” is a brief set of principles, most unobjectionable on their face: “Our individual liberty will forever be fully realized within a Venezuelan ecosystem booming with liberty. …The people of Venezuela deserve a duly elected government that maintains the will and capacity to guarantee the safety of every citizen.” She remains out of power for all that, Maduro having been kidnapped by the U.S. but with his lieutenant installed in his place. Machado’s book certainly gives insight into her antisocialist views and the agenda that might follow should she in fact take office one day, but the book is a bit of a hodgepodge—a chronology, a little autobiographical essay, the manifesto itself, and testimonials by various opponents of the regime—that seems done in a hurry.