Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (Knopf).

Beautiful novel by an author I ought to be arrested for never having noticed before (and high on best best-seller lists next Sunday). Clearly literary in its near-ascetic deployment of style, but also by very definition science fiction—it covers several distinct settings, centuries apart in time, sometimes (for instance) evoking fully inhabited colonies on the moon, not as though that were news but just getting humanity comfortable, a sort of rural exurb, with daily traffic to and from. And humanity did that, learned how and did it, as an instructive experiment: before (there really is no if to this, it’s when), in some remote future our sun dies, we’ll want to be able to construct homes vastly farther away, where our civilization and its ever-ramifying history can survive. All that evoked as calmly as I’ve just recounted it, taking it for granted just as it does the commonplaces of each of the historical eras we live in for a while in this novel (I mentioned the nineteenth century, didn’t I? and the 25th? there are more). I’ve read—I’ve even edited—conventional s-f, including some by elite and innovative writers—Delany, Leguin…and this isn’t that. Quite. But it’s at once the most radical thing I’ve read lately and the most believable in its envisioning of the far future; it’s also as convincing as…Strout, Franzen? in its portrayal of humans living everyday lives in each of those time lines.

Delphine Jones Takes a Chance by Beth Morrey (Putnam).

Just the second novel by this young Brit (after The Love Story of Missy Carmichael, two years ago), and again deft and warm storytelling (not at all literary—but smart, as well as warm). We get to know a single mom, stirring (back) to life in the world, with her 11-year-old daughter’s help.

Murder in Old Bombay by Nev March (Minotaur).

Rich, engrossing mystery (a special first-novel Edgar award winner) that’s also everything one expects of a historical novel, in atmosphere and presence (late nineteenth-century India). With a central character, an investigator of mixed Indian and British heritage who’s both shrewd enough and likable enough to enjoy spending time with. It’s to be the opener of a series; the second book is announced for a year from now, and is to be set in …wait, where? Boston? Huh! Well, so, we’ll see what we see, next spring.

Fierce Poison by Will Thomas (Minotaur).

The thirteenth Barker & Llewelyn novel, just a year after the twelfth (Dance with Death, which is just now out in a handsome trade paperback, appropriately for this tweedy pair of private investigators in Victorian London). As consistent as the books are in style and manner, they continue to be rewarding reading for their inventive plotting and in the ongoing warmth, and the evolving, of the relationship between the two.