Good reads: 6 new, hard-to-put-down novels

By Kim Fay (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, $24)

Sometimes, you just need a book that’s short and sweet. Two women — 20-something Joan, and Imogen, a generation older — begin a friendship over correspondence in 1962, inspired by a mutual interest in cooking and writing. Life unfolds throughout their letters, along with some delicious-sounding recipes.

I was hooked quickly by warmheartedness that shone from the pages. Fay has a gentle knack for character, though you’ll see some of the plot developments coming from a good distance. By the end, I was shedding tears along with the characters, and felt as if I’d made two friends. This is an irresistible story of two women from a lost time, both determined to make the best of things.

By Grant Ginder (Henry Holt and Co., $28)

Ginder’s hilarious fifth novel has a similar satirical zip to the show “Veep.” Nancy Harrison, an ambitious New York congresswoman running for Senate, is faced with a crisis she can’t finesse her way through: her resentful 20-something daughter Greta falls under the spell of a handsome French nationalist and makes headlines at radical demonstrations in Paris. Her brother Nick is dispatched to France to bring her home.

That this operation does not go smoothly is part of the novel’s pleasure: Ginder immerses us into his world so irresistibly that when an implausible last-act twist comes along, we ride it unquestioningly. It’s a pleasure to find a book that’s genuinely funny. But beneath the wit, there’s a warm tale of family ties, no matter how crazy-making they might be.

By David Guterson (Knopf, $27)

“The Final Case,” in its opening pages, seems to be setting up to be a literary legal thriller, based on the real-life death in 2011 of an Ethiopian teenager abused by her adoptive parents. And yet, fiction and reality delicately entwine throughout this novel. The narrator marvels at his father, an elderly public defender who ends up representing one of the accused parents.

Written in an appealingly loose, digressive style — I loved tracing a sentence that went on for nearly a page as our half-awake narrator mused — “The Final Case” is about a horrific crime, but that’s merely the grounding point for a story that seems to whirl and spin on the page. Though a story of hate is at its center, it’s enveloped by a larger one of fiction and wonder and love.

By Lan Samantha Chang (W.W. Norton & Company, $28)

Like the glorious Chinese dinners served within its pages, “The Family Chao” is a little bit of everything: multigenerational family story, immigrant saga, coming-of-age tale, whodunit mystery, literary pastiche (it takes inspiration from “The Brothers Karamazov”). Each element contributes to a hugely satisfying whole. At its center is a restaurant in a small Wisconsin town — Fine Chao, run by the immigrant patriarch Leo Chao and his three sons, Dagou, Ming and James. I was utterly engrossed with Chang’s intricate world of a complex family. We see much through James’ eyes, the sweetest of the characters.

Sprawling and ambitious and yet beautifully contained, “The Family Chao” lets us spend time with this family, hearing their grievances, smelling the inlaid odors of the restaurant, listening to the quiet of a small town where things don’t happen.

By Xochitl Gonzalez (Flatiron Books, $28)

Olga Acevedo, a Manhattan wedding planner, “allowed herself to become distracted from the true American dream — accumulating money — by its phantom cousin, accumulating fame.”

In Gonzalez’s rich debut novel, we come to know Olga, an unsentimental businesswoman in the most sentimental of professions, with some carefully hidden vulnerabilities, including being abandoned by her mother. The book’s narrative looks back to letters from Olga’s mother, offering advice and explanations that shade the present.

Gonzalez puts us into the middle of Olga’s sprawling family, her Brooklyn neighborhood and her quietly opening heart. It’s a vivid and often beautiful journey.

By Kellye Garrett (Mulholland Books, $28)

Every fiction roundup needs a good mystery — and this one delivers a heady mixture of secrets, red herrings and shadows, told by a narrator who instantly becomes a friend you root for. Grad student Lena Scott is devastated when her half-sister Desiree, a reality TV star, is found dead. Law enforcement assumes it’s an overdose, but Lena is certain it’s foul play. And off we go, through the hip-hop universe of Lena and Desiree’s mogul father, and Desiree’s flashy circle of hangers-on.

It’s a smart whodunit — for the record, the final reveal wasn’t who I thought it was — and Lena’s voice won me over instantly. She’s a resourceful detective, at ease in the digital world her sister inhabited. Though this is a dark, thriller-adjacent tale, spending time with Lena is a pleasure.