FICTION

Barkskins , by Annie Proulx (Scribner)

By drilling deep into the forests that enabled this country to conquer the world, Proulx has laid out the whole history of American capitalism and its rapacious destruction of the land.

The Book of Harlan , by Bernice L. McFadden (Akashic)

A miraculous story about a pair of jazz musicians who travel from Harlem to Paris just before the Nazis invade.

Bucky F*cking Dent , by David Duchovny (Farrar Straus Giroux)

Set in 1970s New York amid one of baseball’s most famous pennant races, the “X-Files” star’s second novel traces a rite of passage: a son coming to grips with a distant father who has only a few months to live.

Everybody’s Fool , by Richard Russo (Knopf)

This big-hearted, often hilarious sequel to “Nobody’s Fool” finds police chief Douglas Raymer trying to track down his late wife’s lover.

The Girls , by Emma Cline (Random House)

A woman looks back on her involvement with a Charles Manson-like cult.

Heat & Light , by Jennifer Haigh (Ecco)

A Pennsylvania town is torn apart by the dirty business of fracking.

LaRose , by Louise Erdrich (Harper)

When a man accidentally kills his neighbor’s 5-year-old son, he tries to make amends by turning over his own boy to the grieving parents.

Modern Lovers , by Emma Straub (Riverhead)

Like her 2014 novel “The Vacationers,” Straub’s witty new book has a warm-weather vibe, even if it is set in the less idyllic, if beautifully gentrified, Brooklyn. Here, a group of friends from college, now nearing 50, are forced to take a hard look at their relationships.

My Name is Lucy Barton , by Elizabeth Strout (Random House)

Lucy Barton wakes in the hospital to find her estranged mother at the foot of her bed. For the next five nights, she sits in a chair and tells Lucy stories about her past.

The Nest , by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney (Ecco)

Just before the Plumb siblings are about to cash in the trust fund that will solve all their problems, they discover it’s been almost completely depleted. A comic novel about filial greed and affection.

The Summer Before the War , by Helen Simonson (Random House)

Anglophiles mourning the end of “Downton Abbey” will find solace in this novel that begins in pre-World War I England and deftly observes the effects of war on the staid Edwardian sensibilities of a coastal village.

The Year of the Runaways , by Sunjeev Sahota (Knopf)

By following a handful of young Indian men in England, Sahota has captured the plight of millions of desperate people struggling to find work, to eke out some semblance of a decent life in a world increasingly closed-fisted and mean.

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours , by Helen Oyeyemi (Riverhead)

A series of loosely connected, magically tinged tales about personal and social justice. Built around keys, locks and magic doors, the stories cover a wide territory — from mythology and fairy tales to smartphones and YouTube stars.

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

End of Watch , by Stephen King (Scribner)

The finale to the trilogy that began with “Mr. Mercedes,” this grimly entertaining tale follows the diabolical machinations of a villain thought to be in a vegetative state but who is in fact masterminding a fiendish plan to fool people into killing themselves.

Fixers , by Michael M. Thomas (Melville)

Thomas, a former partner at Lehman Brothers, spins an audacious financial thriller based on real-life events — the 2008 financial crisis — that features cameos by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

A Hero of France , by Alan Furst (Random House)

In this masterly tale of espionage and historical fiction, Furst captures the dangers and intrigue of the French Resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris.

Wilde Lake , by Laura Lippman (Morrow)

A new case dredges up painful memories for Luisa (Lu) Brant, the state’s attorney of Howard County, Md. In what feels like Lippman’s most personal novel, the book is as much a legal drama as it is a tale of childhood and family life.

MEMOIR

Knitlandia , by Clara Parkes (STC Craft)

Parkes, who fled a job in high tech and launched the Knitter’s Review, shares her travels through the world of knitting, from Iceland to Paris and Portland.

A Mother’s Reckoning , by Sue Klebold (Crown)

Seventeen years after the Columbine shooting, the mother of Dylan Klebold tells her story.

Shrill , by Lindy West (Hachette)

Part memoir, part manifesto and social critique. West takes on fat-shaming, rape jokes and men who harass women under the guise of Internet free speech.

Switched On , by John Elder Robison (Spiegel & Grau)

Robison, who has Asperger’s syndrome, chronicles his rich emotional life following a scientific experiment on his brain. Exhilarated but chastened, he delivers an account that is both poignant and scientifically important.

When Breath Becomes Air , by Paul Kalanithi (Random House)

Written by a young neurosurgeon as he faced a terminal cancer diagnosis, this memoir is inherently sad. Still, this moving and thoughtful tale of family, medicine and literature is well worth the emotional investment.

BIOGRAPHY

The Firebrand and the First Lady , by Patricia Bell-Scott (Knopf)

A fascinating portrait of the unusual friendship between Eleanor Roosevelt and a young black activist named Pauli Murray, who went on to become an influential lawyer, Episcopal minister, writer and co-founder of the National Organization for Women.

The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones , by Rich Cohen (Spiegel & Grau)

Cohen approaches the Stones from two directions: as the kid discovering the group from glorious sounds emerging from his older brother’s room and as a young magazine writer working his way into the good graces of the aging rockers.

SCIENCE & MEDICINE

The Gene , by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Scribner)

A thorough and thought-provoking biography of the gene: its science, the scientists who study it and the controversies that have spun from our understanding of it.

Lab Girl , by Hope Jahren (Knopf)

The story of a girl who becomes a scientist, this book is also the story of a career and the endless struggles over funding, recognition and politics that get in the way.

One in a Billion , by Mark Johnson and Kathleen Gallagher (Simon & Schuster)

A riveting account of a medical team’s frantic search for the genetic error threatening a little boy’s life. What they found proved that it was possible to use a person’s genes to diagnose and treat a previously unknown disease and helped usher in the use of genome sequencing for people with unusual disorders.

HISTORY, CURRENT EVENTS & POP CULTURE

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu , by Joshua Hammer (Simon & Schuster)

Part travelogue, part intellectual history, part geopolitical tract and part thriller, Hammer’s book tells the story of a librarian who oversaw a plot to smuggle ancient manuscripts out of Timbuktu, Mali, in an effort to save them from war.

The Caped Crusade, by Glen Weldon (Simon & Schuster)

How does one comic-book character remain so consistently intriguing to so many people over eight decades? A look at the history of Batman and the rise of “nerd culture.”

Evicted , by Matthew Desmond (Crown)

An extraordinary feat of reporting and ethnography, Desmond’s book makes it impossible to consider poverty in America without tackling the central role of housing and the demise of opportunity and of hope that occurs when people are forced to leave their homes.

The Gunning of America , by Pamela Haag (Basic)

An exploration of the major businesses and families that have manufactured firearms — and manufactured the seductiveness of firearms — in this country over the past 150 years.

The Romanovs , by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Knopf)

Drawing on a wide array of Russian sources, Sebag Montefiore paints an unforgettable portrait of characters fascinating and charismatic, odd and odious.

Stamped from the Beginning , by Ibram X. Kendi (Nation Books)

In this history of prejudice in America, Kendi hunts for racist ideas, stretching back to the 15th century, sometimes finding them in unexpected places.

POLITICS

Engines of Liberty, by David Cole (Basic)

When courts fail to protect our rights, citizen advocacy groups step in, as this book shows, and produce sometimes stunning constitutional changes.

Exit Right, by Daniel Oppenheimer (Simon & Schuster)

What causes a liberal to swing to the right? Here are the stories of six 20th-century intellectuals, politicians and journalists who underwent jarring transformations.

The Highest Glass Ceiling , by Ellen Fitzpatrick (Harvard)

The presidential campaigns of Victoria Woodhull, Margaret Chase Smith and Shirley Chisholm hail from another era, but has much really changed?

Republic of Spin, by David Greenberg

(Norton)

The merging of public relations and politics gave us presidential spin and, ever since, the electorate’s head has been spinning — trying to sort fact from hype.