Recent releases of note:

MARCH SISTERS: On Life, Death, and Little Women, by Kate Bolick, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado and Jane Smiley. (Library of America, $21.95.) For the 150th anniversary of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel, four noted authors each celebrate one of its central characters.

BLACK UTOPIA: The History of an Idea From Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism, by Alex Zamalin. (Columbia University, paper, $26; cloth, $80.) Zamalin, who directs the African-American studies program at the University of Detroit, Mercy, traces a strain of utopianism in black art and culture, via critics and supporters.

WHO ARE YOU, CALVIN BLEDSOE? by Brock Clarke. (Algonquin, $26.95.) This exuberant comic novel — involving explosions, secret agents, religious fanatics and a hapless narrator dragged around Europe by his long-lost aunt — is also a sly theological exploration of fate and predestination.

GREAT GODDESSES: Life Lessons From Myths and Monsters, by Nikita Gill. (Putnam, paper, $15.) In prose and poetry, the British-Indian social media star reflects on the proto-feminist role models offered by the heroines and villains of Greek mythology.