Ausländer, by Michael Moritz (Pegasus). This piercing family memoir assembles a portrait of a clan that, like millions of others, was “torn to shreds by the most murderous whirlwind of the twentieth century”: the Holocaust. Moritz, a successful venture capitalist, summons up his relatives vividly. Among them is his paternal grandfather, Max Moritz, who fought for Germany in the First World War, only to be later murdered by Nazis at Dachau. Michael was born in Wales—his father, Alfred, came to England as a teen-ager, and his mother, Doris Rath, arrived on the Kindertransport—and his account is filled with both historical detail and candid observations about the gap between his and his parents’ experiences, and about his mother’s and father’s respective attitudes toward their lost homeland.

Frivolity: A Defense, by Jehanne Dubrow (Columbia). This roving work mounts an investigation into that which is typically dismissed as unserious—for example, fashion, perfume, and romantic comedies. Dubrow argues that the charge of frivolity often serves to disparage figures and activities associated with femininity and queerness, by tying those qualities to vanity and indulgence, and she attempts to make a case for its necessity. “Frivolity calls us to our bodies,” she writes, “which crave pleasure and joy.” Though the connections that Dubrow draws between subjects can sometimes feel forced, she nevertheless offers a thought-provoking meander through a charming array of artifacts and ideas.

May We Feed the King, by Rebecca Perry (Transit). This poetic début novel, a finalist for the Booker Prize, is narrated largely by an unnamed curator who specializes in reconstructing scenes from the past. Her “guiding rule” is to make viewers feel as if those who would’ve inhabited her installations “have just left the room.” At the story’s outset, she begins a commission at a medieval palace, and decides to re-create a room that would have housed a particular king, whose reign has been reduced to just a single page in the historical record. Soon, the curator is transported into that king’s world, but it remains unclear whether the narrative that unfolds is a figment of her imagination. Such is the novel’s own guiding rule, to refute “the idea that we owe anyone the answers they seek—for they are theirs alone to find.”

Sophie, Standing There, by Meg Mason (HarperCollins). The protagonist of this engrossing novel, Sophie, begins the story freshly separated, broke, and working on the production crew of a local literary festival. Her existence is relatively isolated—she is estranged from her best friend, and confides only in her brother—until she becomes obsessed with a writer named Lilac Dunne. Sophie, along with reading Dunne’s books, listens constantly to podcasts on which she appears, and even speaks to an invented version of her, as though she were a friend. When Dunne comes to the festival and the two meet in real life, the author is icy—but also seems interested in Sophie, much to Sophie’s surprise. As their relationship develops, the roots of Sophie’s isolation are revealed—a turn that charges the novel’s argument for the value of connection, literary and personal.