SUMMER by Ali Smith (Pantheon). There's little more for me to tell you about this most exhilarating of masterpieces. There's this: Even though I've said that it didn't matter much in what order you read her AUTUMN, WINTER, and SPRING (and in the largest sense, it doesn't matter, just as you could read, say, MIDDLEMARCH or ANNA KARENINA starting in their middles or wherever and jumping back)—read this one last. It brings things together, knits up some threads that you hadn't noticed, or hadn't minded, were dangling. You'll start this one a bit off the ground, then, and you'll swoop and sink and cling to cliff's edges until you leave it, wiser and sadder and fuller. This is very contemporary stuff, very alert to politics (you may have heard)—in Britain, most specifically, but that means America, too, of course—but, well, it is and it isn't. Or, so's ANNA KARENINA. So is MIDDLEMARCH. You didn't notice, in those, but the people in this great work talk about it a lot, as do we all, these days. In any case, this final book doesn't just sum up, it brings people's stories further forward. In fact, it not only brings them and us up to date, it moves us beyond the grim present—beyond COVID, for one thing—with ever-new insouciance and newly lyrical, even poetic, flair.

SOUTH OF THE BUTTONWOOD TREE by Heather Webber (Tom Doherty/Forge). A really lovely, um, romance novel? more a friendship novel, and with light but pervasive fantasy elements. Or, a southern-small-town novel of old rivalries and snootiness and an abandoned baby (under that tree); by the author of MIDNIGHT AT THE BLACKBIRD CAFE of a couple of years ago.

STRONG FROM THE HEART by Jon Land (Forge). The eleventh of this sensational series—this is Caitlin Strong, Texas Ranger. The longest of them, as best I remember, and maybe even more than usually complex in its relationship to Texas's and Mexico's violent history, much of which has involved drugs. Nowadays, opioids; which means it isn't all bad dudes in shady neighborhoods, but also people in expensive suits and executive suites, and well beyond Texas (not the first time in this series).

THE END OF HER by Shari Lapena (Pamela Dorman/Viking). A proven, high-tension domestic suspense novelist. This, her fifth, is made from the standard ingredients, but worked especially carefully. Fairly early in a happy marriage; demanding babies (twins), the sleeplessness and its side effects convincingly rendered, creating irresistible identification with the mother. A woman shows up who knows things about her husband. She doesn't seem at all trustworthy, but she really does know deeply disturbing things. . . .