The “peace” to which Helen constantly refers is a condition of isolation, complacency, and self-satisfaction. And it takes the violent “disruption” of her brother’s suicide for her to recognize her own solipsism.

This layered, textured novel throws into stark relief the interconnections between experience and memory, and the enduring nature of trauma.

Spanning more than a century, Rebellion weaves the stories of four women (and those of several minor characters) who reject societal and familial expectations for what a woman—a wife, a mother, a daughter, a friend—must be and do.

Not until the last page of Diego Zúñiga’s novel Camanchaca does a camanchaca itself appear.

Rocketing into speculative fiction territory, Behind the Mask, a strikingly entertaining anthology of short stories . . .

There’s a vulnerability to the book that speaks to our inclination toward disaster, and that’s what elevates it beyond another cut-and-paste mystery novel.

November Storm, the debut story collection by Robert Oldshue, provides readers with nine intimate explorations of often haunted characters—a psychiatrist reliving a conversation that may have triggered a long-ago patient to kill his wife, a girl exploring her great-uncle’s prisoner-of-war history for her bat mitzvah project, a young kid accounting for the disappearance of his neighbor’s cat.

Healthcare figures prominently in many of the stories: there’s a children’s hospital, a kidney chain, a fetal surgeon, and a boy with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, among others from the world of illness and treatment.