Boyt, Susie. Loved and Missed. New York Review Books. Sept. 2023. 224p. ISBN 9781681377810. pap. $17.95. FAMILY

When her drug-dependent daughter Eleanor has a baby, Ruth wants to help, eventually giving her a stash of money after discovering a dead body in her apartment and taking the baby home. In the end, the baby rescues disappointed Ruth as much as she rescues the baby. The Pen Ackerley Prize–winning Boyt, daughter of painter Lucian Freud and great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, gets her first U.S. publication; lots of in-house enthusiasm.

Brown, Karma. What Wild Women Do. Dutton. Oct. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9780593186350. $28. WOMEN

Having left Los Angeles, Rowan and fiancé Seth settle in an Adirondacks cabin, where Seth hopes to get moving on the novel he’s been trying to write. Hopeful screenwriter Rowan needs inspiration, too, which she finds in a handbook mentioning that 1970s socialite-turned-feminist Eddie Calloway wanted to host “wild women” at her nearby camp. Then Eddie mysteriously vanished. From the No. 1 internationally best-selling Brown ( Recipe for a Perfect Wife).

Kim, Nancy Jooyoun. What We Kept to Ourselves. Atria. Oct. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9781668004821. $27.99. FAMILY

John Kim is distraught; not only has his wife, Sunny, vanished, but the stranger he’s just found dead in the backyard is carrying a letter addressed to her. With his grown children, he begins investigating, and the story unwinds to the late 1970s, when a pregnant Sunny had just moved with workaholic John from Korea to Los Angeles and finds herself isolated and miserable. From the author of the New York Times best-selling, Reese’s Book Club–honored The Last Story of Mina Lee.

Kwok, Jean. The Leftover Woman. Morrow. Oct. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9780063031463. $30. CD. WOMEN

Fleeing a controlling husband and searching for the daughter taken from her at birth, Jasmine Yang arrives in New York City from a small village in China. Meanwhile, publishing executive Rebecca Whitney, whose contented life includes a newly adopted Chinese daughter, suddenly faces an industry scandal. Their paths will cross thunderously. From the multi-award-winning, New York Times best-selling Kwok; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Steel, Danielle. Second Act. Delacorte. Oct. 2023. 272p. ISBN 9781984821959. $28.99. lrg. prnt. CD. WOMEN

When new owners remove Andy Westfield from his longtime job as head of a big-deal Hollywood studio, he recuperates from the shock by retreating to a remote coastal village a few hours from London. To help put his affairs in order, he hires a local woman who’s herself at a turning point, and he thinks the half-finished novel she inadvertently leaves at the house one day would make a smashing film. Next in an audacious Steel schedule of seven original novels in 2023.

Wright, Lawrence. Mr. Texas. Knopf. Oct. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9780593537374. $29. lrg. prnt. POLITICAL

New Yorker staffer Wright won the Pulitzer Prize for The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, but he writes fiction as well. Not surprisingly, his latest novel has a political twist. After good-hearted Texas rancher Sonny Lamb rescues the neighbors’ daughter and her horse from a burning barn, he’s asked to run as a Republican for the Texas House of Representatives—and wins. But his new job proves to be a challenge to his life and his beliefs.

Yoshimoto, Banana. The Premonition. Counterpoint. Oct. 2023. 256p. tr. from Japanese by Asa Yoneda. ISBN 9781640093713. $24. FAMILY

Though she comes from a secure, loving family, Yayoi finds herself increasingly unsettled at age 19; she has a sense that she’s forgotten something important from childhood. To discover what it is, she moves in with her eccentric aunt Yukino, who eats when she likes, falls asleep in the hallway, and binge-watches Friday the 13th. Celebrated Japanese author Yoshimoto’s 1988 novel, which became a huge best seller, is finally appearing in English.

Young, Adrienne. The Unmaking of June Farrow. Delacorte. Oct. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9780593598672. $28. WOMEN

June Farrow of Jasper, NC, wants to rise above the curse that’s shadowed her family for generations, which eventually drove her mother from home—and out of her mind. Digging through her town’s troubling past, June comes to a mysterious door whose threshold she crosses at her risk; though she senses her own mind slipping, she realizes that she could change both past and present and find true love. From the New York Times best-selling author of Spells for Forgetting.