REQUIRED READING

Spies in the Family

Eva Dillon (Harper Collins) In the mid 1970s, Eva Dillon was living with her family in New Delhi when her father, previously thought to be a State Department employee, was exposed as a CIA spy. He was handling the agency’s highest-ranking double agent — a Soviet general with the code name TOPHAT. The friendship between her father and Dmitri Polyakov went back decades. A well-researched book depicting two families on either side of the Cold War.

The Light We Lost

Jill Santopolo (G.P. Putnam’s Sons) Your new tearjerker has arrived: Fans of “Me Before You” and “One Day” will love/weep over this elegant novel, which begins when two college students meet each other on Sept. 11, 2001, and share an instant connection that lasts through adulthood, even when their lives take them in different directions.

It’s Always the Husband

Michele Campbell (St. Martin’s Press) In the tradition of “Big Little Lies” comes the excellently titled “It’s Always the Husband,” a thriller about three friends — frenemies, really — who met as college roommates. Twenty years later, one of them is standing on a bridge, with someone urging her to jump.

Awakening

Nathaniel Frank (Belknap Press) A comprehensive look at the decades-long fight for marriage equality and how some of the biggest challenges came not from the culture wars but from within the ranks of LGBTQ activists who weren’t convinced they needed to make marriage equality a priority.

Woman No. 17

Edan Lepucki (Hogarth) A stylish noir set in the hills of Los Angeles, “Woman No. 17” introduces us to Lady Daniels, a writer and mother who’s taking a break from her marriage while she tries to write her memoir. She hires a stranger from Craigslist to look after her toddler and keep an eye on her teenage son, Seth. Everything is going fine until the new nanny starts paying a bit too much attention to Seth and things start to fall apart.

Since We Fell

Dennis Lehane (Ecco) Former journalist Rachel Childs has stayed close to home since suffering a very public on-air meltdown, becoming practically a shut-in. She gets a divorce, then meets and marries a man who seems too good to be true. As she begins a new life trying to put the past behind her, she starts to realize she doesn’t know a thing about her new husband, and she’s soon sucked into a world of violence and deceit.