Also of interest...

in the dramas of parenting

Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt (New York Review Books, $18)

Raising a child can be bliss, said Hillary Kelly in The Atlantic. In Susie Boyt’s “beautifully humane” new novel, a London teacher takes custody of her infant granddaughter because the child’s mother is an addict. What lies ahead, surprisingly, is love and joy for the girl and her genteel guardian. The troubles of the girl’s mother never recede from view. Still, “it’s outrageous how engrossing this novel can be even when its two main characters defy narrative convention and bask in their contentment.”

The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis (Knopf, $29)

The new novel from the author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie “makes a strong case that the past can never be shaken off,” said Honorée Fanonne Jeffers in The New York Times. In 1988, a Philadelphia runaway aims to unite with his grandmother in Alabama. She’s fighting for her Black hometown; the boy’s mother has been imprisoned after surviving a police bombing. The book’s shifts in perspective “can try patience,” yet “reveal a fundamental truth: Black folks want to lead a life of self-determination.”

Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter (Ecco, $28)

Hilary Leichter’s second novel is “a gentle puzzle box of a book,” said Annie Berke in The Washington Post. After young parents living in a cramped apartment discover a magical terrace on the far side of a closet, three additional stories unfold that are eventually linked to the child in the first. “To explain more would be to set sail in a sea of spoilers,” yet for all the novel’s unexpected reveals, “the pleasure is in the telling,” and in sharing the characters’ pains and joys.

Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips (Knopf, $28)

“Jayne Anne Phillips is very good at writing awful things,” said Ellen Akins in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In her new novel, a white mother and daughter who have endured a catalog of horrors check into a large West Virginia lunatic asylum a decade after the Civil War. The story of how they arrived there includes battle wounds, death in childbirth, and rape. But Phillips’ ability to channel her characters’ thoughts makes the tale “as compelling, even beautiful, as it is difficult to experience.”