We’re 15 years into the end of the world and the whole deal sucks for Dr. Jonathan Greenway. The mild-mannered professor was fortunate to be teaching a class for the U.S. Army when the dead began rising from their graves. Now he’s a second-class citizen at a fortified base somewhere in the American Rust Belt, splitting his time teaching “New History” to thankless child soldiers and literally shoveling shit at the biomass factory. As he yearns for a stable life with his girlfriend, Jon’s temper runs afoul of the fascist tinpot dictator that runs the joint, and he’s quickly banished to a rapidly dwindling reconnaissance squad. Not that the “Chum Bums,” as they’re known, are crack soldiers—their commanding officer is still haunted from having to icepick his infant daughter, while the rest are expendable conscripts at best. When surveillance reveals a remote church with the power to instantly kill zombies dead (again), the Bums set out on the treacherous journey to investigate. Beset by the dead as well as the Calaveras, a masked death cult from Mexico, Greenway and his comrades finally manage to reach their goal. At the titular refuge, they find that mad chemist James Warnocky has warped theology, science, and alchemy into an infernal combination, though one that holds promise to perform exactly as promised. It’s a good old-fashioned bone-and-gristle cruncher right up George A. Romero’s alley, but there’s more to it. The writing is crisp, punctuated with military patois and medieval violence while Greenway struggles not just to make sense of the horror, but his own place in it. Much like the experiences found in The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later, what’s wrong in this world is human, not some dark force waiting to ambush a hero with a heart of gold. It’s just us.

Every aspiring actor understands that, to succeed in Hollywood, one needs talent, tenacity, and a bit of luck. What they may not realize, however, is that there are additional expectations regarding how an actor should behave, many of which are not immediately apparent to outsiders. “Because the entertainment industry is so competitive, there are many secrets and bits of advice people will be reluctant to share with you,” writes the author in his introduction to this insider’s guide. “Many actors in Hollywood don’t know what they’re up against until it’s too late—and has already negatively impacted their careers.” Did you know, for instance, that certain agents will take on an actor with the intention of “shelving” him—sabotaging him on behalf of a similar actor whom that agent already represents? Or that there exists a “one-strike rule” that means the mere perception that you have wasted someone’s time, even accidentally, can get you blacklisted with that person forever? Or that posing for stock photos—photos taken and made available to advertisers as part of a massive library—can come back to haunt an actor when they unexpectedly resurface years later? Drawing on his decades of experience as an actor on stage and screen, Kimmel lays out often harsh realities while detailing how actors can inadvertently undermine their careers. In 50 brief chapters, each only a few pages in length, the author guides would-be actors through lessons on dealing with managers, agents, and other performers, as well as the labyrinthine workings of the entertainment industry in general. The text includes practical advice (don’t sign with a single umbrella agency for television, film, and voice-over work), psychological tips (don’t succumb to envying other actors), and counsel specific to the peculiar traditions of Hollywood (never accept the offer of coffee at a business meeting).

Kimmel dispenses wisdom with the directness and economy of a weary veteran. “There are a lot of actors out there—far too many—who simply cannot get out of their own way,” the author writes with typical candor. “They can never meet an industry person without saying or doing something completely inappropriate—and thereby obliterating that new connection.” The author has a proudly old-fashioned sensibility; he advises actors against cursing and performing nude scenes, while encouraging them to always practice good table manners (he comes out against handshaking, though; there are many germaphobes in Hollywood). Some of his advice is common sense—find a flexible part-time job to pay the bills, don’t buy a fancy car you can’t afford, prepare thoroughly for your auditions—while other suggestions are less expected (the best way to learn how to act against another person? Take a stage combat class.) While some of Kimmel’s insider stories may feel slightly dated (the text includes references to thespians such as Al Lewis of The Munsters and Jean Carol of Guiding Light), for the most part, his wisdom remains evergreen. Readers will enjoy this demystification of the acting business, and some may save themselves from unnecessary Hollywood heartache.

Lynch, a specialist in international affairs, writes sharply of what he calls America’s “morally and strategically catastrophic policy” in the Middle East, premised on support for autocrats in a region whose burgeoning and mostly young population is “bursting with frustrated talent and boundless potential that neither needs nor wants America to provide order.” Those people are, of course, the ones whom the autocratic regimes labor to suppress, and American policy, Lynch says, assists those regimes in the clampdown. The worst turn, by the author’s account, was the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a “performative war”—in the words of political scientist Ahsan Butt—that had every possibility of furthering democratization in the region but instead shored up a policy marked by a long tradition of bullying. Lynch quotes pundit Jonah Goldberg: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” Iran, our current bête noire, offers greater challenges. Lynch observes that most of America’s good works in the Middle East—food aid, peace negotiations—are responses to its own bad acts, from uncritical support of Israel to the penchant for propping up “friendly dictators.” Surprisingly, the author suggests that one step toward rebalancing the political order in the Middle East would be to allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons; such proliferation would spread to Saudi Arabia and other powers and have “one key effect: it would reduce or eliminate the dependence of the Gulf states on the United States for security and survival.” While that suggestion is eminently debatable, Lynch’s evenhanded argument for remaking American policy in the Middle East is well taken.

The novel begins with the death of the troubled actress, apparently from an overdose of sleeping pills. Immediately, questions surface: Were all the medications on the nightstand prescribed? If she did take her own life, where was the drinking glass for the water to wash down the pills? Contradicting the title, the authors then shift back in time to show Norma Jeane as a young adolescent who goes “from String Bean to hubba-hubba in one summer.” She comes from a broken family—a mother in and out of mental health facilities, a father she never knew, a guardian who’s ready to send her back to the orphanage—which leads to her first marriage, at 16, to a local factory worker turned Marine, Jim Dougherty. The chronological narrative follows Norma Jeane as she becomes Marilyn; as she fights to build a career in Hollywood; as she marries and divorces and has affairs with famous men; as she abuses pills and alcohol, attempting to fill the emptiness that plagues her throughout her short life. What’s not clear is Patterson and Edwards-Jones’ goal here. The early details of Marilyn’s biography are told in short chapters, with few more deeply developed scenes. Sometimes there will be a piece of dialogue or an excerpt from a letter that is presented as authentic—and truly, the bibliography suggests an incredible amount of research. So…why is this a novel? How is this framing of Marilyn’s story new? There is some work at building a conspiracy theory about the Kennedys (which has been hinted at before by James Ellroy); there is some suggestion that her death may have been murder (which has been explored before by Donald H. Wolfe); and there is a clear romanticization of this tragic, gorgeous life (which has been imagined before by Joyce Carol Oates).

Few writers have seen their work reinterpreted as much as Jane Austen’s. “We all encounter Austen differently and from the position of where and when we read her,” writes the scholar Jennie Batchelor in the book’s introduction. “How we read her changes as the world changes around us.” This anthology, a melange of fiction, poetry, essays, and interviews, reflects the diversity of reactions to Austen’s work. Katherine Reay writes of the healing experience of reading the novelist while recovering from a severe injury, while Katie Lumsden discusses the pleasure of rereading Austen’s novels over and over at different stages in her life. Fiction pieces imagine the author and her characters in new, often revisionary arrangements; in Julia Miller’s “Georgiana Darcy—Pistols at Dawn,” Pride and Prejudice’s Georgiana Darcy exacts satisfaction from the gold-digger George Wickham in the form of a duel, while in Charlie Lovett’s novel excerpt “First Impressions,” Austen defends herself against the accusation that she has “a too highly developed interest in fictionalizing [her] acquaintances.” (One particularly meta piece is an Austen update written by actress and novelist Talulah Riley, who starred in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice film adaptation.) Interviewees include Jeff James, the director who brought Persuasion to the stage at the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre, and Martin Jennings, the sculptor who created a bronze sculpture of Austen for Winchester Cathedral. Numerous poets contribute poems, including “Witch-Wife” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, about a woman who “was not made for any man, / And she never will be all mine.” The range of the contributors leaves the reader with a sense of how important Austen is to writers in particular, who see in her not simply an antecedent or role model but as an old friend who, with constancy and wit, is always there during those transitional moments in life—the very moments that Austen herself wrote about with such precision.