I AM, I AM, I AM: Seventeen Brushes With Death, by Maggie O’Farrell. (Vintage, $16.) A mugging, a near drowning, a nightmarish childbirth: The Northern Irish novelist shares her near-death experiences and what it means to know her life could have turned out very differently. The memoir is particularly strong on how her relationship to risk-taking evolved after becoming a mother, and her fears about not doing enough to protect her children.
THE OVERSTORY, by Richard Powers. (Norton, $18.95.) In this series of interconnected stories, the human characters are just the underbrush; the true protagonists are the trees that they encounter. Powers combines botany and storytelling in this majestic novel. Times reviewer Barbara Kingsolver praised the book, calling it “delightfully choreographed, ultimately breathtaking.”
ATOM LAND: A Guided Tour Through the Strange (and Impossibly Small) World of Particle Physics, by Jon Butterworth. (The Experiment, $14.95.) The author, a leading physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, is an entertaining guide, and his book helps answer the question that has intrigued scientists for generations: “What is the universe made of, really, when you get right down to it?”
SPEAK NO EVIL, by Uzodinma Iweala. (Harper Perennial, $15.99.) The second book by Iweala, the author of “Beasts of No Nation,” follows a teenager in Washington, D.C., as he reconciles his coming-of-age with the expectations of his Nigerian parents and their church. Niru, the Harvard-bound protagonist, was raised in a loving home, but after his father discovers he is gay, their relationship becomes strained. The book skillfully deals with generational conflict and what it means to be a young black man in America.
PATRIOT NUMBER ONE: A Chinese Rebel Comes to America, by Lauren Hilgers. (Broadway, $16.) Hilgers profiles Chinese dissident Zhuang Liehong and his wife, Little Yan, who came to the United States in 2014 to avoid a government crackdown. Hilgers, a journalist who spent years living in China, follows the couple as they forge a new life in Queens and navigate the U.S. immigration system.
COUNTRY DARK, by Chris Offutt. (Grove, $16.) In Offutt’s long-awaited novel, a Korean War veteran comes back to Kentucky, tangles with bootleggers and grapples with difficulties at home. But there is an undercurrent of fierce love: As Times reviewer Smith Henderson put it, “winsome twinkles shine through the blackness throughout, thanks in no small part to Offutt’s keen ear and eye.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.