SHARKS IN THE TIME OF SAVIORS, by Kawai Strong Washburn. (MCD/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) Washburn has no interest in the Hawaii of resorts and honeymoons; the main characters in his singular debut novel — three siblings, one of whom may be a mystical savior of the Hawaiians — hail from in a modern yet mystical version of the archipelago, one whose essence no conqueror can ever fully eradicate. “As in García Márquez’s work, the wonders and woes of being part of a community take center stage,” Imbolo Mbue wrote in her review. “With prose that can be breathy and sweaty in one paragraph before gliding softly and tenderly into the next, this passionate writer cries out for us to see Hawaii in its totality: as a place of proud ancestors and gods and spirits, but also of crumbling families and hopelessness and poverty. Of mystery and beauty at every corner.”

A CERTAIN CLARITY: Selected Poems, by Lawrence Joseph. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28.) For almost 40 years Joseph, a poet and law professor, has embraced big questions with blunt words and an ear for meaty talk. This generous selection shows the path his work has traveled. “Not the first poet to meditate on political economy and empire, Joseph is distinguished by his knowledge,” Paul Franz writes in his review. “Walking or driving, mind and senses keyed up to highest pitch amid his wasted and opulent cities, he lets present and past wash over him. ‘I’m no pseudoaesthete,’ he writes: ‘It’s a physical thing. An enthusiasm, / a transport.’”

THE DREAM UNIVERSE: How Fundamental Physics Lost Its Way, by David Lindley. (Doubleday, $26.95.) Physics has gone in a strange direction in recent decades, into the world of exotic speculations about parallel universes and the properties of black holes — all theoretical and abstract. Lindley, an astrophysicist himself, finds the roots of this shift and makes a full-throated argument in favor of returning to a more empirical approach. “Mathematics alone cannot entirely explain reality,” Jim Al-Khalili writes in his review. “Lindley argues that this attitude is prevalent among many researchers working at the forefront of fundamental physics today and asks whether these physicists are even still doing science if their theories do not make testable predictions. After all, if we can never confirm the existence of parallel universes, then isn’t it just metaphysics, however aesthetically pleasing it might be?”

DEATHS OF DESPAIR AND THE FUTURE OF CAPITALISM, by Anne Case and Angus Deaton. (Princeton University, $27.95.) This highly important book examines the pain and despair among white blue-collar workers and suggests that the hopelessness they are experiencing may eventually extend to the entire American work force. “Because of competition from cheap labor in the global south and robots at home, capitalism is failing the blue-collar man, and while the answer is not to eliminate so-called free enterprise, the authors caution, they say that we urgently need to fix it,” Arlie Russell Hochschild writes in her review. “Its victims are not dying in heroic wars or battling firestorms. One by one, they are dying in solitary shame with pill, alcohol or gun unmentioned in the death notice.”

THIS IS CHANCE! The Shaking of an All-American City, a Voice That Held It Together, by Jon Mooallem. (Random House, $28.) On March 27, 1964, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in North America shook Alaska for over four minutes. Mooallem focuses on Genie Chance, a part-time radio reporter who became a source of sanity and vital information for residents in the aftermath. “Mooallem does a nice job of showing the domino of damage in cinematic slow motion — the crevasses opening in city streets, the land slinking and sliding, the indiscriminate collapse of homes of both the rich and the poor,” our reviewer, Timothy Egan, writes. “He also brings to life a half-dozen or so ordinary people who acted in extraordinary ways.”