Wrapped up in fiction

25 notable works offer readers a chance to turn the page on a new adventure

1. ‘After the Funeral,’ by Tessa Hadley

The new collection by the English short-story virtuoso Hadley concerns her familiar themes: the oftdoomed quest for an authentic self; families that are distant and duplicitous; and exhausted marriages.

2. ‘After Sappho,’ by Selby Wynn Schwartz

Schwartz’s first novel follows a meandering course through the late 19th century into the early 20th, focusing on the lives and overlapping connections of an array of real women, most of them artists. The result is not quite narrative fiction and not quite history either, but it is both fascinating and brilliant.

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3. ‘Age of Vice,’ Deepti Kapoor

On the first page of this sprawling saga of a thriller, a Mercedes speeding through Delhi careens off the street and kills five people, including a pregnant woman. That deadly accident ricochets through one of India’s most powerful crime families — and from there the intrigue never pauses to take a breath.

4. ‘Barbara Isn’t Dying,’ by Alina Bronsky, translated by Tim Mohr

In this dark comedy, the hidden story of a difficult marriage is slowly revealed as a husband cares for his terminally ill wife. Bronsky has carefully constructed a novel about fragile identities and the intimacies of small-town German life.

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5. ‘Birnam Wood,’ Eleanor Catton

In New Zealand, a collective of guerrilla gardeners ends up at odds with a brash billionaire who wants land to build a bunker. Ten years after Catton won the Booker Prize for “The Luminaries,” this sleek thriller proves she’s a master at adapting literary forms to her own sly purposes.

6. ‘Blackouts,’ by Justin Torres

Torres’ shimmering, fable-like novel revolves around a heavily modified edition of “Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns,” a landmark report from 1941. The novel’s text is intercut with photographs, illustrations and heavily redacted passages from “Sex Variants.”

7. ‘Chain-Gang AllStars,’ by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

This satire about prison inmates used for gladiatorstyle entertainment is a devastating indictment of our penal system and our attendant enthusiasm for violence. Like “1984” and “The Handmaid’s Tale,” it should permanently shift our understanding of who we are and what we’re capable of doing.

8. ‘Confidence,’ by Rafael Frumkin

Two best friends found a company that promises consumers a lifetime of bliss. Watching their con come undone is part of the pleasure of this page-turning satire, which skewers bloviating billionaires, scam startups and the wellness industrial complex.

9. ‘Crook Manifesto,’ by Colson Whitehead

The latest novel by twotime Pulitzer Prize winner Whitehead is a sequel to his bestselling “Harlem Shuffle.” With these books, Whitehead has identified deficiencies in the noir genre and injected beauty and grace into its often toopredictable and clichéd conventions.

10. ‘Dayswork,’ by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel

“Dayswork” is a brief, illuminating book about Herman Melville and marriage. Co-authored by a married couple, its fragments of words seem to bob on a sea of blank white pages, the ideas coming together elegantly and with deadpan timing.

11. ‘Devil Makes Three,’ by Ben Fountain

This deeply humane political thriller by the author of “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” takes place in Haiti following the 1991 coup. Fountain deftly recreates this geopolitical crisis without a hint of the lecturing tone that can make some works of historical fiction feel as lively as a textbook.

12. ‘Enter Ghost,’ by Isabella Hammad

When a London-based Palestinian actress visits family in Haifa, she winds up agreeing to appear in a West Bank production of “Hamlet.” As she begins to confront her complex guilt about the politically unencumbered life she leads in England, the production reels her to the heart of the political tensions in the region.

13. ‘Family Meal,’ Bryan Washington

A man in free fall after the death of his partner returns home to Houston, where he numbs himself with drugs and anonymous sex. But all is not lost. Washington is a generous writer, with a profound capacity to face the cruelty and pain of contemporary American life while still allowing for hope.

14. ‘Family Lore,’ Elizabeth Acevedo

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Acevedo’s first novel for adults explores the bonds of a Dominican family in New York, tracing the lives of each of the family’s women to highlight the sometimes riotous, sometimes hardwon love of immigrant families and their sacrifices.

15. ‘The Faraway World,’ by Patricia Engel

In 10 compelling stories, Engel explores the indignities faced by new Americans. What makes the collection so rich and compelling is that the Colombian American author places her tales in the context of universal themes.

16. ‘The Fraud,’ by Zadie Smith

In the 1860s, a butcher with a shadowy past claimed that he was Sir Roger Tichborne, the heir to a vast fortune who had been presumed dead. This case is just part of what powers the latest by Smith, who shows herself as adept with historical fiction as she is with courtroom drama.

17. ‘The Guest,’ by Emma Cline

This quintessentially American tale is a smoldering exploration of desire and deception from the point of view of an escort. When she begins receiving threatening text messages from an old acquaintance demanding the money she stole, she escapes to the Hamptons. Needing food and a place to stay — and painkillers if she can find them — she looks upon these summer folks as a field ready to harvest.

18. ‘A Haunting on the Hill,’ by Elizabeth Hand

This remake of Shirley Jackson’s gothic classic “The Haunting of Hill House” is a perfect hybrid of old and new. The story stays true to Jackson’s vision while becoming a thrill of its own.

19. ‘Hello Beautiful,’ by Ann Napolitano

Loosely based on “Little Women,” Napolitano’s latest centers on William, who marries into a March-like family. Napolitano catalogs the multitudes of love and hurt that families contain, and lays bare their powers to both damage and heal.

20. ‘The House of Doors,’ by Tan Twan Eng

Eng’s historical novel reimagines W. Somerset Maugham’s visit to Malaysia, an experience that inspired his short story “The Letter.” Tan folds Maugham into a multilayered tale about high-society Penang, British colonialism and Chinese rebellions.

21. ‘The House on Via Gemito,’ by Domenico Starnone, translated by Oonagh Stransky

“The House on Via Gemito” is a vivid, richly detailed drama, narrated by a boy at pains to understand his father, a struggling artist. An additional note of interest: Many Italians believe that Starnone is the writer behind the pseudonym Elena

Ferrante.

22. ‘The Iliad,’ by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

Wilson has forged a poetic style in English that captures the essence of Homeric Greek. Avoiding both glorification of violence and mere tedium allows her to bring out the real themes of the poem: the human relationships that bind us into communities, made bittersweet by mortality and loss.

23. ‘I Have Some Questions for You,’ by Rebecca Makkai

In this meta murder mystery, Makkai explores the way the mistreatment of women and girls is repressed, mythologized and transmuted into lurid gossip and entertainment. Bodie Kane, a professor and podcaster, returns to her prestigious New Hampshire school 25 years after a murder there.

24. ‘I Will Greet the Sun Again,’ by Khashayar J. Khabushani

This is a novel of survival and longing and love, and in many ways, a modern portrait of an artist as a young man. Its protagonist, known to us as K, is the youngest of three Muslim Iranian American brothers. In telling K’s story, Khabushani perfectly captures the Iranian American experience.

25. ‘In Memoriam,’ by Alice Winn

“In Memoriam” is a World War I novel with an aching love story at its core. With echoes of “Brokeback Mountain,” Winn elegantly portrays a time and place where homosexual love was repressed, leaving two boarding school classmates unsure whether their affection for the other is reciprocated.