Semi-retired Bennett, a man “accustomed to mild interest” in most things, embarks on a road trip to visit ex-girlfriend Jenn in Ann Arbor after she texts him out of the blue. He’s not expecting much but brings along lubricants and lotions just in case. Jenn, however, seems more interested in Bennett’s rental car than romance. Her teen daughter, Zoe, an MMA fighter, needs a ride to Utah for an important match. Zoe’s crusty trainer, Hector, tags along, coercing Bennett into stopping at a small Nebraskan town on the way to the fight. In Ogallala, Hector and his friend Hank continue treating Bennett as a chauffeur. They ask him to give them a ride to someone’s house, and he’s ordered to wait in a corn field. Sneaking to the house, he witnesses a murder. Involvement in the crime’s aftermath makes Bennett feel alive for once, but now he’s complicit. Still, he tries to be a positive influence for Zoe, whose perspective also shifts on this trip. Briefly staying with Hank’s kind sister-in-law and kids on a farm, she sees welcome alternatives to her usual life. The sense of place plays a large role here. Eichhorn skillfully captures the small-town ambiance, at least as seen through the eyes of educated urbanite Bennett. Bennett envisions Ogallala as a place with “a rat-infested motel” and thinks the flat plains “emptiness felt like abandonment.” The town’s predominant clothing style is “bib overalls and greasy T-shirts.” Amber, the sex worker Bennett meets, has a second job at Walmart. Yet Zoe inhabits a much different Ogallala, petting a pig, noticing the high corn, eating delicious homemade pie. Like the landscape, the characters also show many sides. Though appearing shallow, Bennett actually seeks substance. Violent Hector at times encourages both Bennett and Zoe, and Hank is a proud father. Zoe is an especially convincing portrait, insecurely poised on the brink of adulthood without receiving much help in how to get there.

The Colony of New York, built underneath the ruins of the city following the great hurricane of 2085, faces mounting challenges as the 24th century draws to a close. Violent gangs draw in disillusioned youths. Increasingly frequent tremors (“The earth surrounding the tunnels was warming, shifting and changing”) damage buildings and cause pipes to leak or burst. Air quality is on the decline, leaving people fatigued and unable to work. Dealing with all of these problems would be enough for Manny Stewart, the Colony’s police commissioner and one of its wealthiest citizens, but he must also deal with his son, Zach, who’s become increasingly defiant and seems to have come under the sway of bad influences. Manny’s desperation to keep Zach out of trouble, combined with his own trauma of growing up with an abusive alcoholic father, causes him to come down harder and harder on his son—but the more he tries to control him, the more he resists. The generational conflicts reflect the tension between anxiety and hope that pulls at the Colony as it seeks its future. Feltman’s postapocalyptic setting is well developed and filled with the just the right amount of detail to make it feel lived in, without inundating the reader with minutiae. However, much to the novel’s credit, the setting mostly serves as a backdrop to a taut, unflinching portrayal of a difficult father-child relationship with high stakes that extend well beyond their home. Feltman excels at ratcheting up tension, but she also finds hope in unexpected places, leading to some hard-earned, authentically joyous and optimistic moments. Manny, in particular, is a memorable protagonist, often difficult to like but ultimately deserving of the reader’s admiration.

Ghosh is one of the leading chroniclers of the post-colonial South Asian experience. He explores what it is like to be both privileged and displaced: educated in the canons of the West, but always seeing power from the viewpoint of the historically excluded. This collection of essays on environmental trauma and historical alienation, drawn from newspapers and journals from the past 20 years, brings together the author’s major interests: how climate change has disproportionately affected South Asia and has led to mass migrations across the globe; how traditionally oppressed peoples have sought a place at the tables of the great; and how Western history is changed when retold by the non-Western teller. Most revealing in these essays is the story of the lascars, groups of North Indian sailors who played a major role in the expansion of British sea power. Their otherwise unwritten lives animate the middle of this work. Readers new to Ghosh will find much to lead them to his major work, especially his subtle blend of personal reflection and political polemic. His central question remains: How to write “of the past when the predicament of…characters is shaped precisely by a willed wordlessness, an intentional silence, a refusal, or inability, to acknowledge the legitimacy of an overarching narrative? This is a question that is forced upon us by the history of colonial India—indeed, by all colonial histories, replete as they are with examples of events that occur as symptoms of unknown motives and unspoken intentions.” Some of these essays are major interventions into these ideas. Others are chips from the writer’s workbench.

Mason Kowalski is stuck in a dead-end job he hates, writing copy for his boss at a health-food company while taking care of his elderly grandmother in his free time. He regularly experiences stress, due to a generalized anxiety disorder, but he becomes alarmed when he also suffers vivid hallucinations and debilitating headaches. When Mason’s boss confronts him about missing work, he experiences an episode that he accidentally captures on video—only to discover later that the recording lacks audio, aside from his own voice, which sounds as if he’s possessed: “the gruesome voice moans into his ears. Through lungs clogged with tar. Sick with infection. Steeped in nightmares.” Terrified, Mason confides in his best friend and neighbor, Cassy, but his life quickly unravels when he learns that his boss has been murdered—and that he’s the prime suspect. Later, Mason has another attack, during which he unwittingly forces the police to destroy evidence; he escapes custody, but he knows that the police will soon be on his trail. With no idea of how to prove his innocence, Mason, along with Cassy, turns to Rudy Davidson, a former Navy SEAL and current San Mateo police detective. Determined to understand Mason’s condition, the trio run experiments to identify its source to little avail; then Mason encounters a mysterious man with a “shadow” of his own. They soon learn the man has been investigating a suspected supernatural serial killer.

Casamassina, a novelist who’s best known for his work in video game journalism as a cofounder of IGN, crafts a fictional world that feels both cinematic and intimate. However, his ambitious blend of various genres and themes sometimes blurs the novel’s focus. His background in storytelling shines throughout; the novel offers a vivid sense of place and mostly tight plotting, and the brisk prose grounds the surreal narrative in believable rhythms of friendship. Mason is an endearing and sympathetic character whose struggles with anxiety feel authentic. Readers may wish for greater nuance in the supporting cast, though, as their archetypical portrayals sometimes reduce them to ideas, rather than fully realized individuals. The dialogue is punctuated by coarse and often vulgar language, which reinforces the story’s gritty atmosphere. The story, however, takes a drastic turn more than halfway through the novel, shifting from an urban supernatural mystery to a futuristic SF thriller—a lively but disorienting change that may not appeal to all readers. The narrative threads unravel toward the novel’s end in favor of an operatic showdown that will leave readers with more questions than answers. Still, the novel does effectively gesture toward social and ecological themes, depicting a world that’s truly damaged by human excess. These motifs, while fleeting, give the book a timely resonance that will appeal to fans of genre fiction that looks at contemporary issues through a fantastical lens.

Ruby considers herself lucky to be a housemaid for Lumaria’s royal family. After the parents she doesn’t remember were killed in a short but deadly war with neighboring Castella, a kind stranger placed Ruby in the care of Mellie, who was the royal family’s cook. Ruby grew up in the castle, befriended handsome Rowan, one of King Octavius’ sons, and secretly played asynchronous games of chess in the royal library against an unknown opponent. Ruby never imagined that, as a poor girl of unknown origins, she would become Lumaria’s reigning queen. She’s thrust into a terrifying new world, forced to prepare for her coronation, fortify herself against antiroyalist protestors, and possibly marry one of the princes to secure her place on the throne. To make matters worse, Ruby discovers a hidden message, left for her by the king himself, warning her that she’s in danger and that he was murdered—likely by someone close to him. Her life becomes an exacting game of chess: One wrong move and she may be the next piece to fall. Debut author Hart wastes no time launching the plot; the storytelling is straightforward and the worldbuilding is minimal. Readers can expect a satisfying stand-alone mystery with a delicious enemies-to-lovers romance that follows familiar beats. The cast presents white.