THE REGRETS by Amy Bonnaffons (Little, Brown). Beautiful novel and love story and ghost story and even quite dark sex—hm-m, dramedy. Sounds in the description like a certain kind of cozy comedy—there's a ghost—but it's genuinely dark, very sexy at times, and delightful, all right, if you've a tolerance for, well, not heart breaking but heart bruising. I couldn't help thinking of the brilliant contemporary novelist Karen Russell, if only for the fearlessness of invention (well, and the clarity and grace of their distinct styles). Anyway, I am not taking back a bit of either “beautiful” or “love story.”

THE BIG LIE by James Grippando. (Harper). A longstanding favorite at the long-lasting top of his game. It's Jack Swytek the Florida lawyer, of course, and these really are legal thrillers, remember, not private-eye novels with lawyer-y trappings. This one is as timely as they always are, or even more so—it turns around a mightily fraught trial of a member of the electoral college in a hair's-breadth presidential election. (Florida really is a tautly balanced swing state, you know.)

BREAKING HATE: Confronting the New Culture of Extremism by Christian Picciolini (Hachette). In which we discover that an intelligent, socially borderline teenager, recruited shrewdly, really might have become horrified by what he'd been led to believe, and then gotten deeply engaged with what began as just a bright idea, working with what has become great dedication to freeing other suckers from its grip. He's actually good company, this guy, and his story, which is to some extent a sort of sociological periscope into some fairly sickening depths—which aren't new in our nation, never doubt—his story is inspiring and hopeful.

UNDER THE RAINBOW by Celia Laskey (Riverhead). Clever and entertaining “cause” novel about a small town in Kansas, skillfully told in many carefully, respectfully rendered voices, those of a—well, not a wide range, but maybe wider than you'd expect—a range of persuasions, and the gay rights activists sent there to invite them all into the century the rest of us are living in.

HOOD FEMINISM: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall (Viking). Yes, that ‘hood. I wish I could say that this book of essays is surprising, especially because I never thought to give the subject much thought, but it is certainly eye-opening, and full of things, facts as well as ideas, that you'll be glad you had stuck in your ear at last. Kendall is smart and sometimes funny and sometimes angry, but mostly just smart. She maintains a blog, but if these pieces were ever blog posts, they're the most finished, polished writing I remember ever seeing from that source.