White Hot Hate: A True Story of American Terrorism by Dick Lehr (Mariner).

A riveting account of an ordinary Kansan who stumbled on a horrifyingly rageful bunch of guys, and was recruited by the FBI to infiltrate that bunch and record all that was said to him and around him. (Who knew that the FBI pays that much attention to what goes on in the Great Plains? Well, remember Oklahoma City? Waco?) Wherein there soon developed a plan to wipe from the earth a group of immigrants in their little town—Somalis, East African Muslims; bomb them, men, women, and children, to bits. The clique that was planning the slaughter, just three of the lot, weren’t religious fanatics, they were just White Americans, which does mean, in middle western identity-labeling terms, more or less Christian. And they did seem to find the Muslim part of the Somalis’ identity as damnable as their complexion. But then: the man making the tapes was motivated to some extent by his own, rather more active Christian belief: that killing people on such grounds was simply unthinkable. So the plan was exposed and the three were arrested (to their actual indignation: they have still shown no sign of bad conscience about their intentions). The tapes, general meetings, planning sessions, and cringeworthy hateful chitchat—you flinch, but can’t stop reading—make up most of this book, but the author’s understanding of hate in general, hate as, well, not recreation, exactly, but a sort of fitness workout for what might otherwise be puny personalities, shines light in a darkness that America seems always to contain—silent, mostly, but with occasional eruptions.

The Sisters Sweet by Elizabeth Weiss (Dial).

Smart and even clever, this lovely family novel, and that isn’t even what’s best about it. It is about a pair of sisters who’ve spent a good deal of their lives together—really together: pretending in carnivals to be conjoined twins. But even more about the growth that can’t be avoided when that ends. It’s a historical (early in the last century), and beautiful line by line, and emotionally stirring from start to finish.

White on White by Ayeṣegül Savaṣ (Riverhead).

A beautifully made novel, told in first person by a young art student who’s pleasant and likable—who soon becomes the teller of the story but not its central character. It’s a neat trick, though it never strikes us as a trick (the reader barely notices it happening) but it makes for an intimate, sympathetic portrait of her (the narrator) at least as much as her more dramatic friend/landlady.

Mercy by David Baldacci (Grand Central).

A column favorite author’s new one is already a bestseller—the fourth and possibly (though it’s not declared) the culmination of this series: Atlee Pine, the tough and likable FBI agent with a long-unsolved family mystery to untangle. (And another book this week in which sisters are the focus.)