This week’s recommended titles include a couple of series mysteries, three works of fantasy or speculative fiction, and two memoirs that draw on the authors’ personal experiences to reach larger political or social conclusions. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles
First published in Britain in 2004, Tuttle’s slim, marvelous novel is odd, eerie, frustrating and thought-provoking: Tuttle uses horror and speculative fiction to examine questions of gender and sexuality even as the book defies easy classification.
New York Review Books | Paperback, $15.95
Prose’s latest builds upon the charms of her debut, “The Maid,” which introduced the delightful neurodivergent hotel housekeeper Molly Gray. Once again someone has died at the Regency Grand, and once again, Molly is a suspect. Prose’s intricate plotting is seamless, but it’s Molly’s character that sets this mystery apart, giving it real emotional heft.
Ballantine | $29
The latest installment of this delightful mystery series, set in post-World War II New York City, vaults the private investigator Lillian Pentecost and her plucky junior partner, Willowjean “Will” Parker, into a baffling predicament involving the disappearance of an older woman and her clandestine work hunting Nazi spies.
In raw prose, the South African intersex runner — who was forced by the International Association of Athletics Federations to take hormone treatments to compete — breaks her long silence, asserting her right to be celebrated for her natural gifts rather than punished for them.
Norton | $30
Trained to kill by his mother and able to see demons, the protagonist of Chandrasekera’s novel flees his destiny as an assassin and winds up in a politically volatile metropolis. He soon takes interest in the city’s many brightly colored doors, behind which lie troubling forces.
Tordotcom | $27.99
The second novel in a series that began with “No Gods, No Monsters” examines the political fallout of the emergence of monsters across the United States. Factions clash bitterly as police killings and disappearances of monsters rile up an interspecies public.
In her musical new memoir, the former poet laureate examines our country’s oldest wounds through the lens of her own experience as a Black American.
