100 DAYS TO A YOUNGER BRAIN: Maximize Your Memory, Boost Your Brain Health, and Defy Dementia by Sabina Brennan (Hachette). Dr. Brennan is cheerful enough, but relentlessly practical; some of us read far more advanced popular science than this book offers (maybe fewer pages at a time than we used to). But she's right: it's this sort of mindset that we'll need to do more than just salvage what we still have and go on faking the rest (to ourselves—we aren't fooling anybody else who's paying attention). You probably know that to restore resilience to your deteriorating body, what you'll need is a diligent-beyond-boredom routine—the stuff you did in grade school gym: lifts and squats and thrusts and all. Well, it's the same with your brain. Check yourself out in this book, then learn the routines it presents you with; you'll soon discover how serious you really are. Look, by now it has at least dawned on us that we aren't going to live forever; the closer we are to knowing that (I've found, anyway) the more we're motivated to make the most of every last bit. Dr. Brennan will teach you not much theory but plenty of practice. Remember to drop me a line—no hurry, there'll be time—to tell me how it's going.

REMEMBRANCE by Rita Woods (Tor/Forge). I had to think about how to characterize this big, rich novel—not the first to draw on elements of both historical fiction and fantasy. Four timelines, in two historical periods and our present day, people warmly evoked, their stories beautifully told; all centering on African/Haitian American women, slaves in the earlier timelines. Still, not a pure historical novel, in a couple of ways. It does include, especially in the historical passages, matter-of-factly presented fantasy elements, folk magic having a real effect. Then, too, technically, in its structure—it might well have called itself a novel in interrelated stories, a classic form just now undergoing a welcome revival, it seems to me. More mournful (I don't say “instead of”) than angry in tone, warm and admiring of its characters, about as uplifting as it is engrossing and satisfying.

RUNNING AGAINST THE DEVIL by Rick Wilson (Crown Forum). A bestseller, already. Not an anti-Trump rant, but a sane and very sophisticated argument for the centrist idea of the correct way to conduct a presidential campaign at this moment in history—a useful primer of American political realism, not just of this minute but this part of history.

LOSING YOU by Nicci French (Morrow). Reprint (trade or “quality” paperback) of a novel from 2006, that the column didn't cover then, for no reason I can see. It's one of the best of that sensational early run of stand-alone psychological/domestic thrillers that established that name (“Nicci” is a team, we'll recall) as a promise of scares and satisfaction, both. And, sure enough, it's tense and unpredictable to the very last page.