Adjei-Brenyah, Nana Kwame. Friday Black. Mariner: Houghton Harcourt. Oct. 2018. 208p. ISBN 9781328911247. pap. $14.99; ebk. ISBN 9781328915139. SHORT STORIES A George Saunders protégé whose short stories have won awards, Adjei-Brenyah here publishes a much-anticipated first collection that highlights racism and its painful absurdities by putting its characters in unexpected situations. “Zimmer Land,” for instance, portrays racism as an ugly sport, while the title story shows us consumerism at its worst. Acutely written; a 25,000-copy first printing, impressive for a first collection. Enger, Leif. Virgil Wander. Grove. Oct. 2018. 352p. ISBN 9780802128782. $27. LITERARY In Enger’s first novel in a decade, following his acclaimed, best-selling Peace Like a River and So Brave, Young, and Handsome, Midwestern movie house owner Virgil Wander emerges from a car crash that sent him into Lake Superior with his speech and memory impaired. Even as he tries to piece together an understanding of his life and his foundering town, he helps a charming stranger hunting for a vanished son. Hall, Louisa. Trinity. Ecco. Oct. 2018. 336p. ISBN 9780062851963. $26.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062851994. LITERARY Up-and-coming Hall, author of the multiply best-booked Speak, unfolds the life of distinguished physicist Robert Oppenheimer from the perspective of seven fictional characters. Father of the atomic bomb who later decried nuclear proliferation, a defender of Communist friends who later renounced them, prone to love affairs he denied, Oppenheimer was complicated. With a 50,000-copy first printing. Hunt, Laird. In the House in the Dark of the Woods. Little, Brown. Oct. 2018. 224p. ISBN 9780316411059. $25; ebk. ISBN 9780316515795. lib. ebk. ISBN 9780316445153. Downloadable. LITERARY In this Colonial New England–set example of literary horror from the ever original author of the award-winning Neverhome, a Puritan woman leaves her home—voluntarily or not—and is shown wandering a dark woods. There she encounters near-human wolves, a ship made of bones, and a well resonant with screams, evoking witchcraft’s place in America history. Maybe the evil is in her? With a 40,000-copy first printing. Van Booy, Simon. The Sadness of Beautiful Things: Stories. Penguin. Oct. 2018. 160p. ISBN 9780143133049. pap. $16; ebk. ISBN 9780525504863. Downloadable. SHORT STORIES I’m a big fan of Van Booy’s intelligent and absorbing novels (e.g., The Illusion of Separateness), and his second story collection, Love Begins in Winter, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. So check out this new collection, inspired by strangers' anecdotes and showing how life can be shot through with sudden moments of joy or sorrow—as when a blind pianist searches for a duet partner. Wray, John. Godsend. Farrar. Oct. 2018. 240p. ISBN 9780374164706. $26; ebk. ISBN 9780374716097. CD. LITERARY Named a Granta Best of Young American Novelists in 2007 and winner of honors ranging from the Whiting Award to the Berlin Prize, Wray (Lowboy, The Lost Time Accidents) is a smart writer’s writer ever on the verge. This coming-of-age tale should push him forward, not that 18-year-old Aden Sawyer’s desire to escape home is so unusual. But her ambition is: she disguises herself as a young man named Suleyman so that she can go to Pakistan and study Islam at a madrassa.