With a key that opens a vault at a bank located in the city of Korslakov—in the far north of the Old Empire—that should contain insights into his father’s demise, Gardova sets off on the grand adventure with master thief Ashra (aka Lady Midnight) and Flea, a “sharp-tongued street rat” who is deadly with a crossbow. But once they reach their destination, Gardova gets drunk and has the jeweled key stolen from him by an infamous thief known as the Rook. Highly irritated by their companion’s bonehead mistake, Ashra and Flea—along with a contrite Gardova—vow to locate the Rook and somehow retrieve the key. Their mission, however, is beset with many perilous side quests, all of which seem to be tied to noble houses attempting to open an ancient portal called the Crimson Door in the side of a mountain left behind by a godlike race. Behind the door could be advances beyond their wildest dreams, or that could annihilate them all. While no novel is flawless, this comes close. Deeply developed and authentic characters (even the supporting cast are adeptly portrayed), nonstop action, immersive worldbuilding, and a plethora of cool fantasy elements (golems, ghouls, rogue alchemists, mythical beasts, sentient swords, and more) make this an undeniable page-turner. Logan achieves this readability in no small part by savvily ending chapters with bombshell revelations, powerful statements, and leading sentences like this one, which will all but compel fantasy fans to keep reading: “And with a terrible slowness, the door began to open.”

Referred to as “the mother” and “the son,” these two people—like characters in Family Meal (2023) and Memorial (2020)—are equipped with the psychological tools needed to repair a wounded relationship but are almost entirely uncertain how to employ them. Truculent and alcoholic, he’s an English tutor in Tokyo but lately he’s been “forgetting his words.” He’d moved to Japan a decade earlier partly, it seems, to escape his family in Texas, while his brother, Chris, who’d joined the Army, is now in prison. The son agonizes over his fractured relationship with his brother, another element in his perception that something is missing or incomplete in him. The son is sleeping with a man, Taku, who’s married to a woman; he’s seeking “clarity” from Taku about their relationship status. The mother and son hadn’t spoken in a number of years until he calls her one night but is unable to say much; the words he seems to want to say just do not emerge from his mouth, a physical manifestation of his emotionally stunted status. Suddenly, the mother takes two weeks off from her dental-office job in Houston, arrives in Tokyo, and promptly gets lost. It’s remarkable how delicately and finely Washington metes out the emotional journeys for both mother and son. The novel begins with the son’s embittered fury at his mother’s passivity and emotional distance, which becomes a begrudging détente, and then an eventual kindness toward her. She proves to be an adept and patient woman who finds her own way in a dizzying city, making acquaintances until her son lets her into his life. She seeks forgiveness for her past harshness, which her son initially refuses to grant. Washington imbues both mother and son with humane backstories, including the mother’s less-than-easy upbringing in Jamaica. He’s skillful at conveying the ways in which small, even tiny acts of kindness can heal: Returning home to his apartment late one night, the son notices the TV still on and his mother’s soft snoring, and he “slowly wedge[s] a pillow under the back of her neck.” In a less minutely observed novel, that would be an unremarkable moment, but it’s deeply affecting given the fine emotional calibration Washington employs.

The story opens in 1937 with a letter penned by a young man named Robert informing his parents that he is leaving for Spain with his buddy, Max, whose family “woke up one morning with a Star of David burned into their front yard.” Max, with his keen sense of injustice, feels compelled to go to Spain to fight against Franco; he is killed, leaving Robert on his own. In a moment of courage, Robert fires his rifle, killing a soldier on horseback who is about to murder a young boy. Maria del Carmen Escobar, the young boy’s sister, hides Robert in an old olive oil jar deep in the ground, where he remains for decades. The narrative jumps to 1969, when Michael Virtue, recently graduated from college, is motorcycling in Spain thinking about his uncle Robert, about whom he heard stories when he was a child. After crashing his motorcycle, Michael meets Carmen, who tells him Robert is dead, but she never shows him his grave. Twenty years later, Michael returns to Spain to investigate what happened to Robert. He brings with him the mysterious Delia, who is on the run from the FBI, and he reconnects with Carmen. Averett’s large cast of emotionally complex characters is psychologically tormented by literal and figurative remnants (from old ruins to whispered stories) of the Spanish Civil War. As one character says, “when the body dies, what remains are the stories. They never die.” The author deftly limns each character’s wounds: Michael is obsessed with ferreting out the truth about his uncle; Eugenio, an increasingly deranged military officer, seeks revenge for the murder of a family member; and both Delia and Carmen nurse damaged souls. Via quietly intense and emotionally resonant prose, readers are immersed in a world of psychological distress and mystery.

“The sacred bones of a literary culture [are] being ground into dust by technology and AI and many other distractions,” writes essayist Allen. To help remedy this decay, she offers a set of appreciative essays on canonical European and Anglophone writers, focusing on the personalities of writers and how fictional and historical characters interact to offer lessons in living lives of beauty. Many of her writers—Samuel Butler, Somerset Maugham, Osbert Sitwell, and Ogden Nash, among others—achieved success despite hardship or criticism. “Light verse used to be a vital part of American culture, high and low,” Allen writes in her essay on Nash. Why has Sybille Bedford never escaped her status as “one of the twentieth century’s most attractive literary curiosities?” How can the plays of Horton Foote teach us that “we are all orphans wandering alone through life, and the consolations of community and family are fleeting at best?” The more you read these essays, the more you are convinced that there is something wrong with you: Distracted by modernity, you have lost grace and humor in the face of, writes Allen, “our Robespierrean practice of cancellation.” Most of Allen’s writers remain products of their own time, with their own prejudices and foibles. Can we truly get past Patricia Highsmith’s misanthropy? Can we forget Sitwell’s politics? Is Truman Capote anything other than the self-caricature he became? Many of these essays originally appeared in venues noted for their highly curated conservatism: the New Criterion, the Wall Street Journal, Christianity Today. Published over the past 25 years, they offer a road map to a reader unhappy with the way the world has turned out.

Aspiring author Aurelia Lyndham has struggled with writer’s block since the deaths of her mother and Aunt Marigold, which occurred less than a year apart. To cope with these losses, she focuses on running On the Square Books, a bookshop she inherited from Marigold. The business has a specialized inventory—it only sells books written by authors born before 1900. It also holds an incredible surprise. After hearing voices coming from the shop late at night, Aurelia discovers that characters from the books on her Recommended Reads table have emerged from the pages to socialize. She befriends various figures from classic literature, including Count Vronsky from Anna Karenina and Elinor and Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility. Aurelia is soon living a double life, running the bookshop by day and spending time with the literary characters at night. When Count Vronsky laments his tragic and unsettled fate, Aurelia discovers the inspiration she needs to write again. Her project piques the interest of book editor Oliver Pearce; as Aurelia and Oliver work on editing her novel, their friendship and collaboration leads to a deeper attraction, and Aurelia begins to wonder if she will find a happy ending in her own life. Andersen’s debut romance is a charming tale of a writer finding inspiration and a chance at true love via the characters in her favorite classic novels. Aurelia is an amiable protagonist who’s trying to rebuild her life after two devastating losses; her relationship with Oliver Pearce is well developed and cleverly mirrors the story she develops for Count Vronsky. Andersen is a talented storyteller with a knack for vivid descriptions. In one scene, a literary character reaches for a book, “Only—his hand went right through it, turning into a white mist with what looked like black dots running across it…or were they letters?” The novel is an appealing blend of fantasy and romance, rooted in a love of classic novels.