From the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage comes a tale of sisterhood, mothers, and daughters in the American South. Vernice and Anne are two motherless girls who grow up as best friends in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, but whose lives are set on very different trajectories. Vernice eventually goes to Spelman, where she enters into a world of affluent and connected Black women. And then there’s Anne. The hole left by her mother’s absence sends her on an all-consuming journey, which takes her down a road of love and hardship. Throughout it all, we see the various permutations and complexities of women and girls in community.

For readers of multiple pov crime novels that explore the long reach of sexual trauma.

The memoirist of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls has jumped into crime novel writing with an exploration of trauma. Birdie Chang was assaulted and videotaped as a child by Calvin Boyer. Now, as an adult, she has to renew an order of protection against Boyer yearly, the closest she’s gotten to justice since the original case was dismissed, and deal with another victim’s memoir publishing information from her own case. Then Boyer is murdered, and multiple women are further plunged into dealing with Boyer’s actions and seeking answers. —Jamie Canaves

After having read the gorgeous and lilting sci-fi novella This Is How You Lose the Time War, I’ll read anything by Amal El-Mohtar. This collection is full of award-winning stories that get told through letters, folktales, poetry, and even diary entries. Each of them offers a peek into fairy tale worlds that have just enough bite.

This is a new kind of coming-of-age tale. One that dibbles in Sally Rooney realness and dabbles in Ottessa Moshfegh weirdness. Vicky is our main girl, whose obsession with death has carried her from living above an NYC Chinatown funeral parlor to working at a start-up for bespoke urns. She’s well acquainted with the transience of all things, which may be why she struggles to connect with people other than her only friend, Jen. But then she shakes the table: a dating app romp ends in her getting involved with a throuple that includes an artist and a labor organizer. The love she receives from the dynamic really suits her, but doubt still manages to creep in before long.

This short story collection combines elements of speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and horror. It’s perfect if you love the short stories of authors like Karen Russell and Carmen Maria Machado. What’s more, Senaa Ahmad adds historical fiction into the mix. For instance, there is a story about Henry VIII in here, but in this one, Anne Boleyn keeps coming back to life. If you ever imagined hosting a dinner party with Nefertiti, Queen Victoria, John Adams, and Marilyn Monroe, well, that’s in here, too. —Emily Martin