Also of interest... in seeing double

Twinkind by William Viney (Princeton, $35)

As this illustrated survey “thoroughly demonstrates,” twins are “endlessly compelling,” said Sarah Rose Sharp in Hyperallergic. Scholar William Viney is a twin himself, and he has compiled a book that explores the role of twins in legend, in medical research, and as subjects of fiction and carnivalesque spectacle. “Of course, twins have not always been seen as heroes.” They challenge our assumptions about the uniqueness of the individual, and Viney isn’t afraid to explore the ways twins have been demonized.

How to Be Multiple by Helena de Bres (Bloomsbury, $29)

With her new book on twindom, philosopher Helena de Bres looks at the phenomenon “from the inside out,” said Parul Sehgal in The New Yorker. Like William Viney, she is a twin, and cites many of the stories he does while also conveying “a sense of stupefied luck” that she has a twin sister and has grown ever closer to her over time. Though de Bres doesn’t present herself as invulnerable, her book will make many singletons aspire to feel as connected as twins do.

The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan (Viking, $28)

Shubnum Khan’s second novel is “an ambitious delight,” said Lauren Beukes in The New York Times. In a former South African mansion that’s become a boarding house filled with Indian renters, a teenager named Sana is tormented by the ghost of her once-conjoined twin while seeking details about a bride from the building’s past. “All the residents are in some way haunted,” yet “this is not a novel of creeping dread.” It’s “rich and swoony,” with a “grand and gorgeous” love story at its center.

Where You End by Abbott Kahler (Holt, $28)

Abbott Kahler “knows how to draw readers in,” said Gianni Washington in the Chicago Review of Books. A veteran nonfiction author, she has now written a thriller about twin sisters in which one remembers almost nothing after a car accident, including her childhood participation in a shadowy organization, and her twin is feeding her a version of the past that can’t be trusted. Though Where You End is admirably “pacy,” it leaves too many intriguing avenues unexplored.