Almost a decade since her debut collection, This Is Not Your City, Caitlin Horrocks returns with Life Among the Terranauts. The majority of these 14 stories deliver a gut-punch reminder of the seeming unavoidability of loneliness and isolation, despite the promises of coupledom, familial bonds and understood social contracts among various groups. Horrocks begins and ends with outwardly constructed worlds--a dilapidated shrinking town in the opening "The Sleep"; the manmade NovaTerra in the titular "Life Among the Terranauts"--which become constricting, even fatal, cages for the inhabitants. More and more citizens in "The Sleep" choose to hibernate rather than face the depressing reality of winter, while the six citizens carefully chosen to create "Life Among the Terranauts" realize too late they cannot fulfill their two-year residency contracts.

Horrocks's women are especially prone to solitary confinement, even while surrounded by others. In "Norwegian for Troll," a midwestern woman living alone in an oversized, aging house is visited by distant "cousins" from Norway she never knew she had. A gay woman who has a proud affinity with her dead grandmother, who seemed to live openly with her lover, faces jarring truths in "Sun City."

Bad decisions--knowing better, yet still acted upon--cause further estrangement in "23 Months," in which a woman new in town goes to a co-worker's party and sleeps with a stranger under false pretenses. While the collection might be filled with miscommunications and disconnects, Horrocks's storytelling prowess shines. She writes with simple precision, her characters wholly convincing in all their flaws and insecurities. Life Among the Terranauts proves shrewd and rewarding. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

One hundred twenty million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, a massive body of water called the Eromanga Sea bisected the continent of Australia. This sea was a panacea in the minds of Australia's early nation-builders, who saw it as the key to the agricultural success of their nascent empire, and a dark portent for their descendants, now contending with the consequences of a stripped environment. In Madeleine Watts's debut novel, The Inland Sea, a descendant of explorer John Oxley deals with a messy post-college life in Sydney while the latent effects of his colonial gaze unfold around her.

The unnamed narrator of The Inland Sea starts an ill-suited job at the telecom company where all of Australia's emergency calls are dispatched. She works odd hours, receiving only fragments of emergencies through her headset before transferring them to the proper channels. But it soon becomes clear that the car accidents, fires, freak storms, overdoses and inscrutable howls that fill her days leave a potent hangover. The novel is moody, progressing like a low-level fever as the narrator engages in the standard debauchery that defines the unmoored post-college years of many young adults. At the center of her unhealthy behavior is Lachlan, an ex-boyfriend she begins to sleep with again. The topography of the narrator's interpersonal life resembles that of Australia: "Lachlan," the narrator tells us, is not actually his real name. She named him after the river that once caused her grandfather John Oxley so much grief.

With The Inland Sea, Watts has produced a model of autofiction in the age of climate disaster, a genre sure to dominate the coming era. --Emma Levy, freelance writer

As World War I rages across Europe, former deputy sheriff Constance Kopp and her sisters are doing their bit for the war effort. Constance is undercover as an intelligence agent tracking down saboteurs and German spies; Fleurette is dancing and singing her way through army camps Stateside; and Norma is running her pigeon messenger program for the military from an undisclosed location in France. Amy Stewart paints a sharp-eyed picture of wartime challenges and a testy but tough sisterly bond in her sixth Kopp Sisters novel, Dear Miss Kopp.

Though Constance is often the series' main narrator, Fleurette and Norma get equal airtime in this epistolary novel. Urged by her sisters to write more than a few lines, Norma begins sharing episodes from French village life--and her roommate, Agnes, a nurse at the local hospital, begins adding notes of her own. When Agnes is accused of stealing medicines and Norma's pigeon program is put on ice, both women take matters into their own hands. Meanwhile, Fleurette is dealing with the vagaries of life on the road--including a parrot named Laura--and Constance is juggling investigative work and training a young female recruit. Stewart (Kopp Sisters on the March) captures these real-life sisters and their fictional voices with intelligence, wry humor and biting commentary on the sexism faced by women in and out of the armed forces. Letters fly thick and fast between France, New Jersey and Fleurette's various postings, providing warmth, wit and a satisfying mystery for both the sisters and their readers. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

For harried garden designer Emma Lovell, restoring the grand gardens at Highbury House is a dream job: she's walking in the footsteps of her heroine, Venetia Smith, the garden's original architect. But as Emma tackles the overgrown plants and other tasks, she also begins unearthing secrets. Julia Kelly's third historical novel, The Last Garden in England, weaves together Emma's present-day story with Venetia's time at the garden in 1907, as well as the lives of three women during World War II.

Kelly (The Light over London) tells her story in three timelines and five narrative voices, using the garden to bind them together. Her characters share a fierce determination to lead their own lives, no matter what society thinks: Venetia faces serious prejudice as a female landscape designer, but her striking garden rooms at Highbury House reflect her skill. Diana Symonds, the widowed owner of the house in the 1940s, struggles to mother her son and deal with the exigencies of having wounded soldiers on the premises. Beth Pedley, a shy land girl, begins to find a community in Highbury, and Stella Adderton, a young cook, dreams of travel and a professional career. In the present day, as Emma fights to keep her business afloat, she makes some discoveries that throw new light on the choices made by all four women, and that may help illuminate her own way forward. Lushly described, with complex relationships and plenty of romance, Kelly's narrative is a satisfying walk down the garden path. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dream

Before the Ruins, Victoria Gosling's whip-smart debut, is narrated by 38-year-old Andrea, a compliance officer at a London investment fund. She made something of her life despite a hardscrabble upbringing, but her past is still a strong presence in her life. As the novel opens, Andrea gets a call from the mother of her lifelong best friend, Peter: it's been four weeks since the woman has been able to reach her son by telephone. "My instinct was to cover for him," Andrea confides to readers, "only I didn't know what I was covering for." Her own attempt to find Peter proves likewise a failure, so she hires a private detective but keeps up her own search.

In addition to their decades of friendship, what bonds Andrea and Peter is an incident that took place nearly 20 years earlier at the abandoned manor where Andrea, Peter, two close mates and sometimes others would hang out. In 1936, a man died on the premises and a diamond necklace was stolen from one of the houseguests. Andrea and her friends made a game of it, taking turns hiding a paste version of the necklace and searching the manor's grounds and Clue-board rooms for it. This stopped the night their blithesome contest ended grievously.

Public sex, drug taking and a sexual abuse subplot are just some of the ways that Before the Ruins departs from the classic country-house mystery. Peter's disappearance is so engaging, readers may occasionally wish that Andrea didn't tarry so long in the past. If only she had a choice. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Emma Rous (The Au Pair) invites readers to Raven Hall in The Perfect Guests, a gothic thriller with a deep sense of place and a twining narrative that spans decades. In 1988, orphaned young teen Beth is taken in by a couple as a companion to their daughter, at an aging manor house set away from a small village in rural England. In 2019, floundering actress Sadie is hired to join a murder mystery party at the same home, newly renovated and soon to be rented out for more of these parties. A mysterious young woman tells her own story of Raven Hall in a third narrative, with Rous slowly revealing points of connection while building a creeping tension and dread throughout.

The present-day story is reminiscent of a less humorous and decidedly more gothic version of the film Clue. Characters are assigned names, such as "Miss Lamb," by the company that arranged the party and, when combined, an escalating series of small but creepy incidents add up to the classic gothic climax: running from the house screaming.

The past plot line feels like Anne of Green Gables gone horribly wrong. The Meyer-Averell family is reclusive for reasons unknown to Beth, and while her instincts tell her something's not right, she's also grateful that they've taken her in when her own aunt wouldn't. But at what point does gratitude lose out to self-preservation?

Raven Hall holds many secrets, and The Perfect Guests keeps Beth, Sadie and readers guessing as to whether the unease they feel is warranted and who's lurking around the corner. --Suzanne Krohn, editor, Love in Panels

A stepmother's unwanted visit, a mother's unexpected phone call, a lover's departure--all happening in a single month--precipitated the breakdown that eventually engendered Whiting Award winner Nadia Owusu's penetrating memoir, Aftershocks.

Owusu spent her youth navigating multiple countries, with inconsistent permutations of family. Born to an Armenian American mother, Almas (who deserted Owusu at two), and Ghanaian father, Osei (whose United Nations career meant repeated relocations), Owusu learned early that "moving on was what we did." Osei remarried a Tanzanian woman, Anabel. Owusu's only stability was her unwavering bond with her father. When he died before Owusu's 14th birthday, with nowhere else to go, Owusu endured the rest of her childhood with the negligent, sometimes abusive Anabel.

At 18, Owusu arrived in New York City for college and stayed. A decade later, Owusu reluctantly meets Anabel for a fraught dinner, during which Anabel, in a moment of spite, insists Osei died of AIDS, not cancer. The allegation begins to mar his near-faultless legacy--that he could have cheated, could have lied--further unsettling Owusu's already fragile, medicated sense of self. Safe refuge seems to appear in a discarded blue chair she lugs home to her apartment. This one "felt familiar.... It felt almost like sitting on my father's lap." And there she remained, reexamining the many shocks that left her untethered. After seven days, she finally rises, to make her own solid, habitable world.

Beyond any imperfections, Owusu's raw vulnerability hauntingly, steadily beckons readers. By gathering "all the places I tried to belong to and all the people I long for," Owusu wills herself whole. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way revolutionized many people's approach to creativity. In The Listening Path, Cameron shares her experience and wisdom and warmly invites readers to add a daily walk to their tool kits, as a means of tapping into the moment and paying attention.

The Artist's Way caused a tectonic shift in opening the way to creativity; The Listening Path asks readers to go deep within, and will most benefit those who've embraced Cameron's previous book. The six-week practice offered here includes personal anecdotes and also interviews with people Cameron considers excellent listeners, from actors and authors to a physical trainer and real estate agent. After a brief refresher in which she expands on and deepens the practice of daily Morning Pages and weekly Artist's Dates, Cameron introduces a more meditative practice, refined with the benefit of time and experience. Week One begins gently, with "Listening to Our Environment," and suggests readers keep a log of their daily soundtrack (the alarm clock, the microwave buzzer). In Week Two, "Listening to Others," she encourages readers to observe in conversations who is "rehearsing what they will say next... [and] aren't truly present" versus those who really listen. Cameron moves readers from a tangible practice into a spiritual realm in the next three weeks. She urges open-mindedness; as the mind quiets, what she calls the "still small voice" may emerge, whether it's a voice within or the voice of a loved one.

Cameron closes with "Listening to the Silence," and readers who make a practice of her ideas will gain a newfound appreciation of being fully attentive to the present, aware and listening. --Jennifer M. Brown, senior editor

In Eden Royce's impressive and complex debut novel, it's 1963, and Jezebel Turner and her twin brother, Jay, have just buried their grandmother. As the children grieve, they must also contend with a major shift outside the home: integration has come to their South Carolina island.

Jezebel, who is skipping a grade and leaving Jay behind, is having trouble making friends. Adding to her loneliness is an extrasensory perception: Jezebel hears and sees things nobody else seems to notice. The Turners are known for being rootworkers (the Gullah Geechee term for magic readers may know as "hoodoo or conjure or a host of other names") and, while many members of the community benefit from root magic, few would ever admit to such a thing. Now that the twins are 11, Jezebel's uncle will begin to teach them how to work root--exactly at a time they might end up needing to use it. The twins are scared because a thoroughly non-supernatural evil--a white cop--is intent on meddling with and terrorizing their mother.

Royce, herself a member of the Gullah Geechee nation, has created a dark and evocative middle-grade novel in Root Magic. She elegantly melds everyday aspects of life--such as the Turners' code-switching and using Gullah (which is contextually translated)--with tween angst, folklore and horrors both rare and familiar. --Sarah Hannah Gómez, freelance critic and doctoral candidate, University of Arizona